Far From the End of the World
by El Stormo
Summary: Life at the farthest edges of the universe can be dangerous and unpredictable, as if manipulated by a whimsical, unseen jester. This is a novelization of my very first RimWorld game, playing in Ironman mode, with events occurring exactly as they do during play. Some embellisments and dramatizations are included of course, but the core events occur as they do during the game.
1. Planetfall

_Note: This story is written in parallel with the author's first Rimworld game, with randomized pawns. It is a real-time dramatization of all things, good and bad, as they happen, literally written as I play. Peripheral elements are added for plausibility and storytelling purposes, but the events that occur are all directly transposed from the ongoing game._  
 _As I am told, the only legit game is a Randy Random game, so that's what this is._

* * *

 **Planetfall**

* * *

The only witnesses to the crash were the animals, wandering around the verdant plains of a planet which probably had a name, or at least a number, somewhere in some archive. A fiery, smoking meteor roared down, making a grey streak in the sky as it fell, and smashed to the ground, striking a crater and shaking the earth.

Had it meant to make planetfall here? Perhaps it had been an escape pod. Perhaps it had just been a chunk of debris from a now-disintegrated spacecraft. Regardless, the three people inside had survived the fall, their longsleep sarcophagi doing what they had been built to do – take the force of the impact to allow the occupant to survive.

Larisa was the first to wake. Her eyes opened but she could only see a sky-coloured blur. Her head ached, as did the rest of her. She felt immensely cold, and as she ran her hands over her arms, she realized why – the cold slime of the longsleep sarcophagus still clung to her. Her hands, slippery with goop, clawed at the edge of the sarcophagus, finally finding purchase. Her muscles aching, she hoisted herself out. She wobbled on her legs, but didn't fall over. Wiping her eyes, she tried looking around, her vision improving slowly.

The blurry blue-grey forms of two more sarcophagi lay a ways further, its occupants still completely asleep. She could tell they were still alive from the blinking green light. They'd find their own way out, like she had. She looked down at herself and saw only skin-coloured blur. Some people apparently asked for coffee right after longsleep, but for her, first order of business would be getting some clothes on before the others woke up.

Trying to focus, she looked around for a water source and saw what looked like a small pond over in the distance. She felt around in the smashed and bent sarcophagus, slicing open her pinky on the sharp edge of a torn metal plate, and eventually her fingers found the strap of the survival kit included in every sarcophagus. It would have all kinds of stuff, but most importantly, a set of clothes.

She staggered to the pond-like blur, her bare feet squishing in the mud, and dipped a toe in the water. Cold, but not dangerously so. She took a few steps into the water, the cold chilling her bones, and rinsed all the slime off. Getting it out of her hair was a pain, but she got it done eventually, her vision steadily improving. She crawled out, opening the survival kit until her fingers felt the coarse texture of a towel. Then it was simply a matter of drying off and hauling her aching body into the synthread pants and shirt she'd pulled from the kit, along with the rubber shoes she wriggled her feet into.

Better. No socks though. She _hated_ wearing shoes without socks.

Maybe she didn't have a particular craving for coffee, but she did feel hungry as a horse. She rummaged through the survival kit and found what she was looking for, her eyes now focused enough to recognize the gold-coloured packaging of the MRE's packed as part of the essential goods for surviving the first days. Although, calling the nutritional paste an 'MRE' was stretching the terminology a bit.

She sat down, squeezing the gunk out of the packet and sucking it down. It tasted like newspaper, but at least it held all the nutrients necessary for a full day's necessities. She looked up at the sky, her vision almost fully restored. Early morning, end of spring, she estimated. What better way to start the day than washing off slime and eating newspaper paste.

But where exactly was she starting this new day? What year was it? How far had her ship gone until, somehow, someway, these three sarcophagi had found their way here? This clearly wasn't Earth, or Terra if you preferred. She, and the two other occupants of the longsleepers, had clearly fallen to a strange planet, and seeing how there didn't seem to be any civilization for miles around, probably a Rimworld. Would they even survive here? Just the three of them? Worry started to creep into Larisa's heart, because no matter how lush and beautiful this world was, no one survived for very long if they didn't know what to do.

Before she could go from worried to anxious, a _bleep_ sounded and the green light on one of the sarcophagi began blinking. Moments later, a bothered moan came from the contraption, sounding female. At the same time, the other light also began to blink. Seemed her fellow crash landers were waking up. She hoped they weren't too annoying. It was better not to be alone on a strange world, and she was really hoping these two would have at least some idea what to do, but honestly, she'd take the company of animals over that of people any day. A hand felt around at the edge of the sarcophagus, and Larisa supposed she should get up and give the newly-awakened person a hand.

She stepped over to the sarcophagus and laid her fingers on the slimy, blindly feeling hand.

"Hey, wh… is th… that another person?"

Larisa said nothing, closing her fingers around the other woman's hand and helping her out. Damn, she hoped her own exit from the sarcophagus had been a bit more graceful than this one. The girl she hauled out was slack-jawed, one eyelid drooping and her slimy hair clinging to her face.

"Say… say something, will you?"

Yeah, that would be kinda hard. Larisa just kept quiet, as she'd done all her life, and hauled the woman out of the longsleeper, pulling out the survival kit with her other hand.

"Is… is someone there?"

A male voice this time. Larisa sighed and rolled her eyes. One at a time. She gently placed her hand on the man's shoulder to confirm she was there, then took his survival kit, thrusting it in his slimy arms. He reflexively hugged it against his body.

"Wait… who's that talking now?" the tan-skinned woman blinked, trying to rub the slime from her eyes. She squinted and slurred, "Wait, there's two more people?"

Larisa sighed, loudly enough for them both to hear, and took his free hand, guiding it to her shoulder so he knew where to go. Then she picked the other woman's survival kit back up and slowly walked them towards the water, trying to avert her eyes from their nakedness. It was the first time she actually saw a man naked, and she couldn't even look at him from pure embarrassment. At least this one was a young specimen, around her age of eighteen. If it had been a wrinkly old one, ugh. The woman looked a bit older. Mid-twenties or so.

"Why is… why is only one of you talking?" the man asked.

"I don't… I don't know. Why aren't you saying anything?"

"I can't see anything. Where… are you taking us?"

Larisa ignored the questions and guided them both towards the water. When they were at the edge of the pond, she quickly tapped the toe of her shoe on the water's surface, so they knew what to expect. She gently guided the girl into the water, and she began, thankfully, washing herself of her own accord, her face still numb and her eyes trying to discern shapes but not succeeding.

The man complained when he set his foot in the water. "Wait, that's… that's cold!"

"It's… only water," the tan-skinned girl slurred. "You'll… be fine."

Larisa's relief was immense when the man sat down in the water and also began washing himself. There was no way she was going to do it.

The woman seemed to be done, feeling around for the water's edge and slowly creeping out on her hands and feet. Larisa threw the towel over her shoulders and let her get dry and dressed, handing her the appropriate items while she did the same for the guy. They dressed like blind people, probably because they were. Larisa figured it'd take more time for them to get back into working order, they were probably just 'common' humans.

"So uh… why don't you talk?" the woman asked, still straining her eyes to see anything more than just blurred shapes. What a stupid question. How could she explain why she couldn't talk to people who couldn't see? Wait, she knew. She stepped over to the woman, lifted her index finger and put it against the woman's lips, making a cross over her mouth. Then she did the same to the man.

"Oh! Maybe she's mute," the man said. Good, about time they realized. She clapped twice to show that was, indeed, the case. Then she stuck an MRE into the hands of both her new companions.

"Oh, right. Guess that makes sense."

Larisa got a better look at them now, free of the slime and numbness of the longsleeper, and no longer impeded by their lack of clothes. The man looked more like a boy, probably sixteen or so, clearly trying to look older by means of hazel sideburns all the way down to his jaw. He looked alright, she supposed. A bit too baby-faced. The woman had long jet-black hair, which complemented her lustrous tan skin, and Larisa was jealous to realize she found her very good-looking. Much better-looking than she was at least, her face determined and powerful, and yet delicate. But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it'd cause them both to spend time with each other and leave her mostly alone to do her own thing.

"So uh, I'm Karl. Karl Johnson," the man said, plucking at the packaging of his MRE. "I mean… we should tell each other our names, right? But just call me Chef, everyone does that. Well. Not that there's still much of an 'everyone'."

Chef, huh? That at least suggested that he was good at making food, otherwise it would be the worst nickname ever.

The woman squeezed the MRE packet's contents in her mouth with a smooth movement. She'd done this before, apparently. "Cass," she said. "But somehow it always ends up turning into Cassie."

The boy – 'Chef' apparently – chuckled and said, "I s'pose you can just write down your name when our eyes get good enough to read, huh?"

Yes, that was, indeed, the plan.

Cassie, the tan-skinned woman, looked around, squinting at the three sarcophagi. "Just the three of us? This is going to be interesting."

"We might run into other people at some point though, no?" the guy said, sucking awkwardly at the MRE packet. "I mean, this place might be populated?" He looked at the golden wrapper of the nutritional paste and made a face. "Ugh, this tastes offensively bad."

"At some point, maybe. But so far, I can't see any man-made structures or signs of civilization… not that I can see much of anything right now." She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling at the knots. "I mean, think about it. There's an infinite amount of planets in the universe. What's the odds of us landing on a populated one?"

It had an atmosphere, Larisa thought to herself, and it was close enough for their longsleepers to eventually arrive here. So there was a very good chance humanity had already sent the occasional colony ship here. After all, the human race had fanned out across the galaxy for millennia now, and was probably still doing it, no matter how long they'd travelled. Sadly, she had no way to tell her two companions this, so she just had to let them prattle on.

"Not too shabby, actually," the boy said. "There's humans everywhere these days. Well, that depends on when 'these days' is… we must have slept for years and years."

"Probably, yeah."

"Well," the boy rose on wobbly legs, "this planet's populated now. By us."

"I s'pose. I can see a little better. Should ransack our sarcophagi and our survival kits to see what we can use. Best if we get a shelter up. We shouldn't spend our first night sleeping rough, we'll need our energy in the coming days."

"Sure."

Larisa tapped the girl on the shoulder. The boy saw it, and came to stand by them. With her finger, she wrote in the dirt, in big capital letters: LARISA.

The others had to squint, but they managed to read it eventually. "Well," the boy said with a smile, "Nice to meet you, Larisa."

She hoped it was actually nice to meet them, as well.

"Same," the other woman said. "We should get started, though." She clapped her hands. "Alright, everyone! Pool resources." She added deed to word and went to her sarcophagus, on shaky legs. Leaning inside, she began chucking everything that wasn't fixed to the longsleeper onto the ground, over her shoulder. Larisa looked on, taking stock of the items. It didn't look like a very impressive collection, but it was a start.

The longsleeper and proprietary survival kit Cassie had arrived in had contained all sorts of necessary items for the most immediate needs: a plasteel knife, a small cutter-welder complete with its own power source, several more MREs, a few lengths of rope, a box of nails, a mess-tin, a compass and a multi-tool. Several seed packets completed the loadout. The others' contents were similar, with a few differences. Larisa vaguely remembered specific items included in her longsleeper, based on… what she was good at? Or had she chosen them directly? The memory escaped her, which wasn't illogical. It had been, after all, centuries ago.

Larisa did remember the writing pad and pencils that had been stowed into her sleeper, and Chef's had held two plasteel cooking knives. It was immediately clear what Cassie's job would be when her last item emerged, a bolt-action rifle, looking basic but effective. Ugh. She'd probably insist on hunting animals for a quick food source. Larisa could accept shooting dangerous predators, or hunting game if really necessary for survival, but this chick better not start shooting at everything that moved. Or maybe… maybe her job would be to keep the others in line. A rifle tended to do that pretty well.

"No need to be worried," Cassie said casually, apparently now seeing well enough to discern facial expressions to a somewhat reliable degree. "I'm a sailor. My crew is my life, and you guys are my crew now. This is for the protection of all of us, and for hunting. Not to put me in charge." She chuckled. "I know fuck-all about surviving and establishing a colony, so we wouldn't last long if I was calling the shots." She checked the rifle's chamber. "Which begs the question, do you two have any idea what to do next? Like, how to build a shelter and such?"

Larisa shook her head, and Chef, too, said he didn't. "But we have a small survival booklet. I'm sure that'll tell us how to proceed from here."

"Sure." She sighed. "We have no one who's any good at building things? We sure could have used someone like that."

"I can see pretty well, just about," Chef said, picking up one of the welder-cutters. "We still have food to last a few days, so a shelter is priority. We can't read the booklet just yet, well, Larisa can, but yeah…" he cleared his throat. "So let's start with what we can do." He looked around. "Lot of solid trees around, from what I can tell." He was right, the trees were clearly oak and ash. "So let's get cutting."

Larisa pointed at her eyes, then to the area around her.

"Why?" Cassie asked.

People always wanted to know why, didn't they? Larisa slapped the ground and alternated between a thumbs-up and thumbs-down.

"Oh, I see. Well, take this. You never know." She held out the rifle. When Larisa hesitated, she gave it a shake and insisted, "Come on. We don't know what kind of creatures live here. And with what I can see, I'd probably shoot trees instead of attacking predators right now."

She took the rifle, just to stop the nagging.

Chef and Cassie got to work, setting their multi-tools against the trunks of the trees, starting with small ones, and working their way to bigger specimens as they got more confident. Larisa hoped neither of them would be stupid enough to get a tree on their heads. As they worked, she wandered around, trying to get an idea of the immediate lay of the land. A few spots looked interesting, and she jotted a crude map of their surroundings down on her notepad. It wasn't detailed, but it would serve for now. She also noticed thorny bushes scattered about, with fruits that were either raspberries, or an implausibly accurate imitation of them.

She roamed as far as she dared, never letting the smoke plume of the crashed longsleepers out of sight. There were several rock formations around, mostly what looked like granite and slate. She didn't know the first thing about mining (or was it called 'quarrying'?), and she guessed neither did the others, but they might be forced to learn someday, and it was good to know where the stone was if they needed it.

It was just after midday by the time she decided she'd explored enough, and she returned to the others, finding them sitting on tree stumps, their mess-tins over a small fire. She frowned when she saw that the tins were filled with nothing but water. What, were they making tea?

"Can't just drink water from a puddle, hun," Chef said, his brow glistening with sweat. "Gotta boil it first, get the germs out."

Oh, right.

Beaming, he pointed at the wood stockpile next to him. "But hey, see what we've done with our time?"

She supposed he had a right to be somewhat proud. He and Cassie had felled several trees and cut them into poles and boards, and the stockpile was impressive, several cubic metres of wood. It wouldn't build them a skyscraper, but combined with the box of nails and the survival booklet, they could probably build themselves something better than just a lean-to.

Cassie just sat there quietly, munching some kind of root she'd pulled from the ground. It looked like a wild parsnip, but Larisa didn't think this girl had the knowledge to properly identify roots. With a frown, she wrote,

 _don't just pull roots from ground_

 _can be poisonous_

Cassie read it, still squinting, and then shrugged. "I sniffed it. Then took a few bites and it was edible."

"It's a parsnip," Chef confirmed. "I don't know much about surviving in the wild, but I've seen this thing in plenty of kitchens, don't worry, it's safe to eat."

Larisa harrumphed – there wasn't much else she could do – and began leafing in the survival booklet. It didn't hold as much information as she'd hoped, but there was a small guide on how to build a shed. They could work from there. She held the booklet out to Chef. Somehow, she trusted him more than miss gun-toting pretty-face.

"Alright… let's see…" Chef mumbled, turning pages back and forth. "So uh… first thing…" He looked up from the booklet. "This ground's pretty level, right?"

Cassie finished her parsnip and tossed the greens away. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Right. We should start by installing… what's it called… deck piers, right." He looked up at the wood stockpile, and down at the booklet again. "We need to saw rectangular wooden plugs of, like, fifty centimetres long. Say… forty of them?"

They started work, taking the longer poles and turning them into smaller piers. Larisa had never worked with a welder/cutter before, but Chef briefly explained what little he knew about its operation. It was rather self-explanatory, the cutting laser had several settings, 'wood', 'stone' and 'metal' among them, and it went through the wood like butter. When the piers were cut – Larisa had cut only a pitiful number compared to Chef and Cassie – Chef hammered them into the soft ground using a big wooden block as a hammer. Together, Chef and Cassie tested if the piers were level, and hammered a few more times on the ones that needed it.

They went on, Chef reading from the survival book with every step, trying to make sense of things and then explain them. They strung support beams over the deck piers to hold up something called 'floor joists', then attached boards to the tops of the outer beam, supposedly to keep the floor joists in place. When that was done, they had a primitive, and rather crooked, floor framework. They nailed boards to the framework to create a floor.

After a brief pause, during which they drank the water they'd previously boiled and went for a stroll to the nearest raspberry bush for refreshments, they got back to work, Larisa keeping quiet about the painful blisters forming on her hands. It felt nice, in a way. Maybe it was the sense of achieving something, or maybe the pain just made her feel more alive. It was late afternoon when they started work on the framework of the back wall, and early evening when all the wall framework was done.

"Shit." Chef said, his hands in his sides, looking at the framework. "We forgot to make the back wall lower and to slope the side walls." He thumbed through the booklet. "Keeps the rain from… ah, fuck it. I'm not starting over."

They treated themselves to another MRE and drank the rest of the water. While a new batch boiled, they went on. The welder/cutter made things proceed extremely quickly, and the boards on the roof went on one after the other, Chef and Cassie laying a board on the framework, cutting it to match the length of the one before, and nailing it down.

Darkness began to fall, but the shed wasn't done yet. Larisa's blisters were big sacks of plasma and her hands were riddled with splinters, but the pain, while causing serious discomfort, also felt strangely calming. Pain always had that effect on her. At least they got the roof, the back wall, and part of the side done.

"Light's going," Cassie pointed out, sounding bored. "Call it a day?"

Chef stood with his arms crossed. "Mmm. S'pose we'll have to. Wish we'd gotten it done before nightfall though."

"I don't think the night will be too cold." She trudged over to the wood stockpile and began hauling armfuls of leaves to the half-completed shed. Looking up as she walked, she muttered, "No rain coming either. Least not for the first few hours."

Hauling leaves for a softer sleeping spot was a good idea, and the others did the same. It would be a relatively warm night, but still Larisa wished she had a blanket. Cassie articulated her thoughts, though not in the way Larisa would have preferred. "Tomorrow, I'm shooting some animals. Make sure we have some nice furs to sleep under."

"Good idea," Chef muttered. "Could go for some grilled venison too."

Ugh.

"G'night."

"Night."

Larisa tapped her knuckles on the wood twice.


	2. New Days

**New Days**

* * *

When she woke, Cassie was surprised the shelter hadn't collapsed on top of them, because her body certainly felt like it had. She wiped the sand from her eyes, stretched, and clambered out of the shelter, leaving the two other occupants to sleep in. She drank some purified water, then trudged over to the nearby pond to slap some more in her face. He two people she'd crash-landed with looked a bit young and wimpy, but at least the guy calling himself Chef had a good head in his shoulders. She wasn't so sure about the other one though. The flower child. Hugging trees was nice, but it would get you nowhere if you were stranded on a strange planet. She really hoped the girl had some usable skills, because the situation was precarious enough already without one third of the group being dead weight.

Still, she'd helped to build the shelter without complaining overmuch. Not that she could, har har. She hadn't been as good at the job as Cassie and Chef had been, but at least she'd realized that everyone had to pitch in. She figured the two others could finish the shelter, leaving her to do what she was good at: firing a gun. She'd never killed a person, but she'd been trained more than enough, and the days on shore, hunting with her father, had taught her a great deal, all things which would be useful now. Because it wasn't just about how well you could draw a bead on something. You had to know where to look, how to approach, how animals moved and thought, when to sit and wait, and when to give chase.

And how not to get eaten by a god damn bear.

"We'll need to move all the gear and food into the shelter," a voice came from behind her.

"Yeah, sure. Shouldn't take long."

"It'll get ruined if we leave it out in the open."

"Or stolen. Yeah."

Chef sat down next to her, his hair standing in all directions. "Sleep well?"

"I slept as badly as you look."

He grinned. "Wish I'd slept the way you look."

It was a trite compliment, but it still managed to make her briefly smile. "Flower child still asleep?"

"She was waking up when I got out of, uh, 'bed'. Should be here soon."

"Cool. So hey, I'm going to grab my rifle and score us some meat. Or at least try to. Can I leave you two in charge of building? Shelter's almost finished, right? Should only take a few hours?"

He nodded, handing her an MRE packet and opening one himself. "Sure."

The morning air was chilly, the sky pale blue. He sat down and hugged his knees. "Should find a way to make us some more clothes. Build something more permanent. Secure a source of food and make a stockpile. All before winter comes, so we can ride it out." He sighed. "We're fucked, aren't we?"

Well that wasn't the right attitude at all. "Chef, the ape men in prehistory survived winters, otherwise we wouldn't exist. And they didn't have multi-tools or cutter-welders or any of that stuff. We'll be _fine_. As long as we stay busy and don't waste time faffing about, we can get through this."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Besides," she added, "If we just give up, we're definitely going to die. We might as well give it all we've got. I'm not just going to lie down and starve. If things go from bad to worse, I want to at least tell myself I did everything I could."

He smiled and got up. "You're absolutely right." He looked back at the shelter, tugging at the waistband of his pants. "God, I wish we had some coffee."

Did he have to remind her? "Yeah, tell me about it. I think we'll be able to make tea if we find some leaves that are suitable. But coffee, I think it'll take a _long_ time before we'll have our next cup of joe." She slung the rifle over her shoulder, the inside of her mouth still icky from the gruesome nutritional paste. "And we _will_ be here for a very long time. Anyway, I'm going to go look for some food. Maybe if you have a few moments to spare, flower child over there can help you find some edible fruits. Or roots. Or mushrooms. Or whatever."

"Flower child?" he said with a frown, cocking his head. "I hope you didn't mean that as an insult. It's just us three here, we need to make this work, remember?"

It hadn't really been an insult, just a throw-away comment. Mostly. "Nah, like I said, you guys are my crew now. I just hope she'll pull her weight."

He nodded. "All of us need to."

"Speaking of which, there she is." The dishevelled form of Larisa shuffled out of the shelter, like a zombie in a bad mood. "Not a graceful riser."

Cassie left them to finish the shelter and with the rifle over her shoulder, she set out to score some food. It didn't take long for her to come across tracks which looked bovine in nature. If there were actual bovine species on this planet, that would be amazing. Ruminants could usually be domesticated, and why shoot an animal if you could also keep it as cattle?

Before she could follow the tracks very far, however, she came across something else. A large chunk of machinery had recently crashed down between the trees, and now lay smashed flat inside a crater. She carefully came closer and realized what it was – another part of the ship they'd arrived in… or better, been ejected from, it would seem. She made a note of the location on the map she'd copied from Larisa. These things probably had useful components still inside, or at least the raw steel could serve for something. There were other things she noticed too, as she travelled. Big chunks of dark stone, what looked like slate, were visible on the surface, some were too big to haul, but those could be cut down to smaller bits, and brought back to the camp as well.

She crested a hill and came upon a sight that filled her both with joy and melancholy. Accompanied by a smell on the air she knew all too well, was the sight of the sea.

* * *

"Well, that's that."

It was, indeed. The shelter, a small cabin but hopefully the start of something far greater, had been completed. Next step would be to replace the leaf piles with actually decent cots, or even beds, but for now, all the stuff needed to be hauled inside, sheltered from the elements and critters. The mute girl stood looking at him, her hands in her sides. She'd tied her hair in two ponytails on the side of her head, with an irregular fringe falling over her forehead. "You wanna help me haul stuff?"

The girl shook her head and pointed at a patch of land a ways further, shaking the seed packet she held in her other hand.

Chef looked where she was pointing and wondered if she actually had any idea of what she was doing. "Uh, Larisa… You want to sow there?"

She gave him a face that asked him if he was mentally challenged.

"No, I'm just asking, because… well, we only have so many seeds, and that patch of land looks much more fertile." It did. Larisa intended to go to a stretch of land that only had grass, while another patch, just to the south, had wild flowers growing on it, in all colours. Surely she had to sow on the most fertile land?

She rolled her eyes, stuck the seed packet back in her pocket, and marched towards him, taking out her notepad. As Chef saw her face, knotted in irritation, he said, "Hey, I'm just trying to help here, we can't just waste our – "

He stopped talking when he saw the word written on the paper, in large, bold letters.

 _GARDENER_

"Alright, fine," he said, "But I mean, the land over there has flowers, this one just has grass, and – "

She stopped him with a raised finger and scrawled on her notepad as fast as she could. Chef waited patiently, although he did have to tell himself to remain calm in the face of her impatience.

 _no flowers on fertile land_

 _grass grows too well there_

 _suffocates flowers_

 _flowers only grow well on less fertile soil_

 _less grass to compete with_

 _flowers = not very good soil_

 _grass = very good soil_

 _clear? Y/N  
_

He held up his hands. "Alright, alright, I didn't mean anything by it, I just thought – " she began scribbling again.

 _thought wrong_

"Yeah, apparently," he bit at her. "No reason to act like I just pissed in your shoes, though. We're in this together, remember?"

Scribble, scribble.

 _sorry_

 _not good with people_

"So it seems," he sighed. He hoped the other girl was at least a bit more social. Seemed she was, thankfully. He didn't want to spend his remaining years on this rock with two women in a constant state of PMS. Many people would doubtless say it was a blessing, one man on a planet with two ladies, but the only thing that really mattered to him was that people didn't get at each other's throats. "Look, we all need to get used to this, and this is worrying for all of us, but we can't start getting angry at each other."

Her frown didn't disappear, but she nodded nonetheless. It was a start. She pointed her thumb over her shoulder and took out the seed packet.

"Sure, yeah, gotta think of the long term. The sooner we get a reliable food supply going, the better."

She nodded again and turned, walking off, leaving chef to sigh, his hands in his sides. He watched her go, but reminded himself he had to start hauling. He knew himself, once he was busy doing work, he gave it all he got, and loved what he did, but he also knew the whole getting-started thing was something he had a really regretful tendency to put off. And procrastinating had been just fine when he'd been freed and could spend his days taking care of his own little plot of land with no one to look out for, but right now, he needed his old self back again. Well, minus the back-whipping of course.

He pushed the thoughts to his former life away and trudged to the shed, snatching up the fallen pieces of equipment and provisions as he went, stacking them all neatly in the shelter. It wasn't a lot of work, after a half hour everything was sheltered from the elements and predators, but he knew that if he gave himself time for a break now, he'd just laze around, and that just wouldn't do. Cassie was out hunting – and probably looking very attractive as she did so – and Risa was sowing… whatever seeds she'd picked. Least he could do was make himself useful until the food came in.

The piles of leaves would be a good start. Cassie would, hopefully, return with some kind of prize, and with any luck, that prize could be skinned for what could eventually become a set of blankets for everyone. By that time, everyone's sleeping accommodations should be upgraded from 'leaf pile' to 'something resembling a bed'. Besides, pile of leaves or no, sleeping on the ground was unhealthy, painful and unpleasant.

He was going to make bed boxes. The welder-cutter made turning wood into planks or boards very easy, so he might as well use it to its fullest. Maybe if he worked fast, he could get something done to deal with the cadaver Cassie would, hopefully, bring back. Some kind of working surface for butchering. Just a simple table would do.

He went out, grabbed one of the logs still lying around, and began cutting it into long planks. It was easy, the welder-cutter going through the wood like butter, but its cutting beam, for some reason, stopping at flesh harmlessly. Several planks, a few pegs, and some nails later, the first bed box was built. It wasn't more than an oversized orange crate, but it worked. All they had to do was fill it up with something soft, make something that could serve as a pillow, and with a few furs on top, they'd have a comfortable bed.

It was good to work hard, but to work for himself. He was nowhere near a decent builder, but this was very simple stuff, and the survival manual was a great help, even if he did have to refer to it constantly, it slowed him down much less than it helped him forward. The two other bed boxes were already done when the sun began setting, and Larisa returned. He was eager to get some kind of acknowledgement for what he'd done, but she cast a quick glance at Chef's work and went back outside without saying anything. He hoped she really was just 'not good with people' and not a conceited shrew.

As if she'd heard him, she stuck her head back in and gave him a thumbs-up. Better than nothing.

He'd gathered a few 2x4's and was leafing through the survival manual when he looked up and saw Cassie walking towards him. "Hey Chef, wanna give me a hand with this?"

"I was actually…" but then he saw he animal carcass lying on the ground, a good sixty metres behind Cass. "Oh sure, yeah."

He walked towards her, and they both went to fetch the cadaver. Cassie was out of breath and sweat beaded on her skin. "Shit, how long have you been hauling that thing?"

"Uh," she gasped, "until I saw the shelter. So uh… one and a half klik?"

"Should have said something," he told her as they each grabbed the strange, woolly, cow-like creature by a hoof and started dragging. The thing weighed a tonne, and while he didn't doubt Cassie was a woman who could lift more than just a shopping bag, he was still amazed that she'd managed to drag the thing all the way back. "Any idea what this is?"

"Nope. Looks like a cow, only fluffier." It had a spade-like, almost triangular head, with a broad forehead and narrow chin. "Kinda has the physique of a bison, right? Or a buffalo?"

Chef thought more in the direction of a cow, but he said, "Yeah, sure, kinda."

"It's strangely woolly though, which I'm pretty sure is a plus. Fluffy." Her eyes lit up. "Let's call it a fluffalo!"

It was a nice idea, but he'd heard that name before. "Pretty sure fluffalos already exist. Although I heard they hatch from eggs, so maybe someone just made that up."

"Fine," she laughed. "'Muffalo', then! How's that?"

He laughed along with her. "Sure, fine, that'll work."

"I tried to approach this one, but it bolted," she took a breath, tired from the dragging. "So I had to shoot it instead."

He looked down at the cadaver, and indeed, she'd flawlessly plugged it in the torso, right where he supposed the heart would be. "Nice kill."

"Thanks. I try not to make things suffer, you know? Kinda the way I'd like to go as well."

"Everyone, I think."

"Mm."

"So hey," he said, changing the subject away from people's possible deaths. "When you so rudely interrupted me to do your hard labour, I was actually building a sort-of workbench to use for butchering."

"Aw," she said with a smile, "What a vote of confidence!"

"Isn't it? Anyway, I meant to say, I've been busy while you were away. Finished the shelter. Built us some things resembling beds."

"Cool," she said. "Can't wait to see them." She sounded like she meant it. "Better sleeping accommodations would be nice."

"Thought the same thing. Wanna help me quickly put this butchering table together?"

"Sure," she breathed, "but I'm sitting down a spell first. I'm beat."

Yeah, he figured the girl could use a breather. He wasn't sure about 'flower child', but this one clearly knew what working was. He had to admit to himself that hauling such a massive animal alone, for more than a kilometre might simply be too much for him. When she took off her jacket to cool herself off, he could see the muscles in her arms, not the bulky ones the male athletes in his village had had, but sleek, defined ones. It was strange to see a woman with such a build. Where he'd lived, the women had done house work.

They both sat down and passed the tin of boiled water between them. His stomach growled, but the thought of a nice grilled chunk of meat… 'muffalo' meat, it would seem, was enough to let his patience last a little longer. He decided not to think about the possibility that meat from creatures on strange planets might be poisonous.

"So," he asked, "Sailor, huh?"

She nodded. "Yup. Sailed the seas with an arr and a yo ho ho and all that. It was a good life."

"Why'd you leave?"

She opened her mouth to speak, then checked, and finally said, "Nasty business. I s'pose it won't matter if I tell you now, everyone involved is probably long dead now anyway, depending on how long we've travelled." She took a breath. "I wasn't… just a sailor. I mean, my job was a bit more complex."

He took a sip of water, enjoying the feeling of it running down his gullet. "How's that?"

"Eh, it's not very pretty. Rather not talk about it too much, but being a petty officer on a destroyer was only half of my purpose on the ship. I'd… picked up certain talents when I was a child, and I was expected to make use of them during my duty."

"Certain talents, huh?"

"Mm. Sort of secret agent stuff. Mostly keeping my eyes and ears open, doing some investigating here and there."

"Spy work?"

"Basically. Although it was neatly described as the more media-friendly National Security Covert Operations. Abbreviated for even less bad PR as 'NaSCO'. I was secret police, if you want me to put it shortly."

"Wow. Ever uh… killed anyone?"

She shook her head, thankfully. "No. Exchanged bullets once, with a foreign spy hiding on board the ship, but I nobody got killed." She chuckled. "I managed to shoot him in the buttock and get him arrested. And all that without revealing my identity."

Chef didn't know anything about shooting people, but he took her word for it if she said it was quite a feat. The only people he'd ever seen carrying guns had been his damn guards. And they'd been much more fond of using the butts of their rifles over the triggers. His position had been respectable – relatively – among the prisoners because of his cooking skills, but the ones doing the menial labour had gotten more than a few hard knocks from a gun stock or baton over the years. He'd managed to avoid punishment most of the time, simply by keeping his head down and doing as he was told. It wasn't the most courageous way to pass one's time in slavery, but it was by far the healthiest.

"You awake?"

"Mm? Sorry, thoughts went their own way for a bit." At times, his thoughts had been the only distraction he'd had, and he'd made use of them very, very often as he'd stood by the stove, making food by the buckets for hours on end.

"So with a nickname 'Chef', I assume you know the basics of butchering?"

He nodded. He wasn't a butcher, per se, but of course, he'd seen more than enough meat, and handled more than enough carcasses, to be able to disassemble an animal without too much difficulty. "Sure, I know how it's done. I mean, unless it's got some kind of weird alien uh…"

"Physiology, right. Well, I'll leave it to you if that's alright? Where's flower child?" She looked around and spotted the girl, bent over, scratching at the grassy soil. "Oh."

"Yeah," Chef said, "she's doing what she does best, apparently. Said she was a gardener. Well, wrote."

"Mm. I suppose it's not a big leap from gardener to farmer. And a sustainable food source is definitely important." She looked out at the meadows surrounding them. "Can't simply depend on hunting. Too unpredictable. Not enough vitamins either."

"Apparently the seeds are a kind of fast-growing variety. Said so on the packet."

"Let's hope so." Clouds drifted overhead, and as they blocked out the sun, the temperature became less pleasant. "Come on," she grunted, getting up. "Let's build us a table for the butcherin'."

They began, constructing a crude but solid wooden table with relative ease. They talked a little as they worked, getting to know each other a bit. They might as well since they were (hopefully) going to spend a lot of time together on this lovely-looking but terrifying rock. They'd been lucky enough to land in a deciduous area, and not a wind-swept, icy tundra or a sweltering, withered desert, but still, the prospect of being stuck here forever was daunting… and yet, Chef found some courage as he listened to Cassie and her optimistic plans for the coming days. She wasn't a quitter, that much was certain. The next day, she wanted to expand the shelter, by building a separate storage room, and find some way to preserve the meat. Spoilage would, after all, be extremely fast if the meat was left out in the warm open air, not to mention the vermin it would attract. And the day after, she determined to go look for more specimens of the animal she'd just shot, in hopes of domesticating them somehow. That would be a real challenge.

"Do you think it's even possible?" Chef asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he reinforced the butcher table's wooden surface with more planks. "I mean, you tried before, right?"

"I estimate a ten percent chance of success," she said with a grin. "However, I also estimate a ninety-eight percent chance that I'll have nothing better to do."

"You're right, and it would be great if it worked. This one has an udder, or uh, _had_ an udder… so if the milk's drinkable…"

"Yup," she agreed. "Another sustainable food source."

Dreamily, he said, "I can only imagine the joy we'd have of some hot milk in the morning."

"Let's hope you won't have to imagine for much longer," Cassie said, using the welder-cutter to slice a shallow groove into the table's surface, to allow blood to drain during the butchering. Clever.

"Well," Chef said, not unproud of the completed butcher table, "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure this'll do just fine. There was a knife in our survival kit somewhere, right?"

With a smile, Cassie held it out to him. "Was smart enough to fetch it during my potty break just now."

"You lie," Chef said with a grin. "Girls don't go potty." He took the knife and hoisted the massive animal carcass onto the table, with Cassie's help. "Well, I'll be busy here for a while. How 'bout you take a second to relax?"

She thought for a moment, her hands in her sides. "I'll just walk the perimeter. You know, just because the first life-form we encountered wasn't hostile, doesn't mean that'll always be the case."

The girl was right. He hadn't thought about it yet, but predators were a very real possibility during the day too. It would be a massive bummer to spend all this time ensuring their survival, only to get gobbled up by some kind of native terror-monster. "Be careful, alright."

She nodded. "Absolutely."

He let her go and set to work on the carcass. He supposed stringing it up would have been more useful for gutting, but too late now. He'd just have to haul the guts out this way. He set the knife edge against the muffalo's sternum and pushed it down, sawing open the abdominal cavity. It was getting colder, and the butcher's table stood exposed, outside on the meadow, but no point in complaining.

After disposing of the beast's innards, he skinned it, cut off the most tasty-looking chunks of meat, and dismembered it, keeping some of the meat on the bones. The skin looked like it could be turned into suitable leather, and the wool, definitely, would be useful for someone who knew how to weave. But that wasn't the most pressing concern. Most important thing right now would be to preserve the meat. Smoking it might work, but by the time a smokehouse was done, the meat would have rotted away already. The only real option was to grill all of it, at least this way it'd keep for a day or two more.

As he gathered up the meat chunks and separated the useful bits from the waste, Larisa approached, and despite her disapproving face, she picked up a few low-quality bits of meat, then trotted off again. Chef had no idea what she was doing, but he didn't ask questions.

He dug a hole with a crude wooden trowel he'd cut for the occasion, and dumped the innards inside, burying them as deep as possible at a safe distance from the shelter. Then he gathered up some more wood and lit a fire. He might as well start the grilling. As the small fire slowly gathered its strength, he skewered the meat chunks onto pointed sticks and laid them out.

The skewers all ready, he sat down on a log and saw Larisa approaching, holding something in her arms. It looked like… "Larisa, is that… a cat?"

She smiled broadly, cradling a docile, gorgeous white cat in her arms. So that was what she'd needed the meat for.

"I'll be damned," Chef exclaimed. Somehow the sight of the cat made him feel so much less alone and nowhere near as defeated as he had before. Perhaps it was because there'd be extra company, perhaps it was because their colony had actually grown for the first time, or maybe it was simply the hope that if cats made their way to them, maybe actual people would too.

Cassie returned after a few minutes too, drawn to the fire and the now mouth-watering smell of grilled meat that filled the air. She, too, immediately accepted the cat into the fold, immediately identifying it as male and asking how it should be called, saying anything was fine except 'Morgana' if they wanted to use their evenings efficiently. After a few ridiculous suggestions, Chef simply shrugged and say, "I swear, with what you two are coming up with, it'd be more merciful if we just name him 'Bob'."

And so, Bob the cat spent the night with the three marooned space-farers, who all hoped he'd come to stay.


	3. Not Alone

**Not Alone**

The meat had to be eaten quickly to avoid spoilage, but Chef definitely didn't mind a breakfast that consisted of cold meat, and neither did Cassie. Larisa turned her nose up to the idea, writing only that she 'didn't like eating animals', but she accepted the fact that food was necessary, no matter where it came from, and that letting the meat go to waste would be even worse than eating it. She did make sure to clearly display a note saying, 'can tolerate hunting. no cruelty though'.

After breakfast – sadly without warm milk – Larisa went to fetch another seed packet from the shelter and set off to a nearby patch of land to sow even more future vegetables. She'd taken the potato seeds this time, and selected a less fertile bit of soil to grow them in. Chef thought that made sense, after all, everyone knew potatoes were anything but fussy when it came to the ground they were sown in. Hell, they'd even grown on the garbage heap back home.

Cassie had set off to patrol the perimeter again, and so he was left alone. Even Bob spent most of his time twisting around Larisa's ankles. With no real job to do, Chef figured he might as well go cut down some more trees to process into planks.

Larisa liked it best when she was alone, but that meant 'without people around her'. Bob the cat wasn't people, and she enjoyed his company as he rubbed the side of his head against her calves, meowed quietly as she worked, or simply sat a distance away, licking himself clean. Every once in a while, he pounced on an insect or some other tiny thing that moved, but for the most part, he just kept her company, watching her, nuzzling her, or just being there. Larisa permitted herself to assume he did so because he simply enjoyed it, and not only because of the small scraps of meat she kept in her pocket and occasionally tossed his way. The way to an animal's love was through its stomach, true, but Larisa was also firmly convinced that animals sought and gave affection for its own sake as well, and not just for the expected reward of treats.

She righted her back and stretched, her hands on her lumbar region. This work was murder on the spine, but it had to be done. She could only imagine how hard this all must be for regular people. Still, she'd deserved a break, and a short sit-down in the shelter with the last of the sterilized water. The sun was high in the sky, and its heat beat down on her. Heatstroke was a very real danger, and it was a good idea to cool off every now and then.

Chef was a ways off, tampering with the settings on his welder-cutter, his back to her. She was sure nobody would mind if she drank the last of the water.

As she entered the shelter, and her eyes tried to adapt to the low light, she thought she saw a dark shadow in the far corner. Her heart briefly stopped, even as she tried to tell herself it was probably Cassie taking a brief cat nap.

Even if Larisa had been able to shout, she never would have had the time to do so. A powerful force struck her in the torso, bowling her over. Reflexively, her hand shot out and grabbed hold of whatever it could, her fingers closing around a rush of fabric and clinging on.

There was a cursing voice and the sound of a body striking the wooden floorboards, at the same time Larisa smacked to the floor, her teeth clacking together. The shadow tried to regain its footing, but Larisa's other hand grabbed hold of it as well, and the next moment, she felt herself being dragged out along with the shadow. A powerful blow hit her on the cheek and all sound fell away, save for the ringing in her ears. Another blast of pain came as a hard impact struck her sternum.

Now, in the light, she could see her attacker. Between the flailing arms and kicking legs, she could see the face of another human, female, with lustrous tanned skin. For a moment, she thought it was just Cassie and this was all a misunderstanding, but then another punch socked her in the forehead and her vision doubled and blurred. She wasn't even aware of her fingers still clinging to her attacker, but they did.

A _bang_ sounded, loud enough to penetrate the deafness the numbing blows had inflicted on her. The following scream, too, reached her ears. No more fists or knees came, and Larisa managed to regain her footing, her fingers still around the other attacker's clothing. Now it was her turn to fight back, and she let go with one hand, balling it into a fist and striking the woman square on the nose. The satisfaction was immense as she felt the other's nose crunching beneath her knuckles.

She did not have time to land another blow. She saw a wooden shape whip through the air, hitting the attacker in the back of the head. All resistance fell away as the woman collapsed like a bag of meat.

It only took a few breaths for the pain to make itself known. Her cheek began pounding to the rhythm of her thundering heartbeat, and her chest felt like it had been dented inwards, pain also radiating from there. She bent double and fell into a coughing fit.

"You alright?" she heard Chef's worried voice. She simply remained doubled over and flapped her hand to show she'd be fine. It felt nice somehow. Made her feel alive.

Running footsteps and panting breaths approached, and Cassie's voice came with it. "… the Hell?"

"I don't know," Chef blurted, confused, still holding the wooden plank, one of its corners with blood and a few black hairs clinging to it. "All of a sudden I see Risa and this… whoever she is, stumbling out of the shelter, giving each other what-for."

Larisa managed to right her back again, and scribbled,

 _someone in shelter_

 _thief?_

"Yeah, probably," Cassie said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. "She's out for the count for now."

"Probably even worse," Chef pointed out. "I hit her pretty hard, and well, the bullet probably wasn't very healthy either."

Larisa looked down at the woman who'd attacked her. She was lying in the grass, her eyes closed. Her nose was swelling, and blood caked her upper lip and chin. Those weren't the least of her injuries, however. Her left hand was a ruin, the thumb and forefinger all but destroyed, white shards of bone sticking out from inside the torn, red meat.

"What do we do with her?" Cassie asked. "Whatever it is, we have to decide quickly."

"We don't know why she's here. Maybe she's a survivor too. You know, from the ship? Seems the choice we have is either fix her up, or um, you know. Put her to sleep. But I'd rather not resort to that, if it's all the same to you guys."

Cassie cocked her head. "Me neither... But we don't have much medicine or food. I'm all for avoiding needless bloodshed, but…"

Larisa shrugged and wrote,

 _On one hand_

 _Human being and so are we_

 _Shouldn't kill her unless we have to_

 _On other hand_

 _Have enough problems without spending effort on injured_

 _Might not even survive_

Chef scratched the back of his head. "This is difficult. Personally, I think we should strive to keep our humanity as much as we can. And that also means showing mercy to those who try to steal from us."

"I'm all for mercy," Cassie said, "but we need to consider this carefully. There's not much point in doing the right thing if it means we'll all starve to death."

Chef nodded. "I know, but still… I don't want to be a few weeks down the line and think to myself, 'we could have done more', you know?"

"She _did_ try to steal from us."

"That's what we assume. And hardly means she deserves to die."

Larisa wrote,

 _play stupid games_

 _win stupid prizes_

That got a chuckle out of Chef. "I know, but still." He sighed. "There's three of us. We can just call a vote. You want our little thief to live, raise your hand." He added deed to word and stuck his hand in the air.

Cassie, with a grin telling Chef he was being way too soft, raised her hand after a moment too.

Larisa, after a few moments, joined in, but whether it was out of her own accord, or simply not to appear contrarian when it no longer mattered anyway, was anything but clear, not even to herself.

"Alright," Cassie said. "Decided, by unanimous vote. Let's haul her to the shelter, see what we can do for her. But we _are_ tying her up."

Larisa nodded as vigorously as she could without looking ridiculous.

The three of them lifted the ailing woman up and carried her to the shelter, laying her down in one of the beds. Bob the cat immediately began nuzzling her face.

"Let's get that hand bandaged," Cassie said. "I don't suppose any of you know anything about medicine?"

She was right not to suppose so.

"Right. Um, I know _some_ first aid, but it's not much. We can't really sterilize the hand, but we definitely need to stop the bleeding and make sure the injuries don't get infected. Chef, while I take care of this, can you and Larisa build some kind of cell? Just a small hut to keep her inside?"

"And get it done today?" the guy asked. "No way."

"Well, we need to keep her inside, or the moment we turn our heads, she'll be gone with all our stuff."

 _We keep her in here_ , Larisa wrote.

 _Sleep rough for a night_

 _Build ourselves a better shelter_

Chef took the paper and nodded. "Seems like the best idea, yeah."

With a shrug, Cassie said, "Sure, if that's what you want. Not like the nights will get tragically cold in the first week, looks like." She looked up at the sky with a doubtful face. "Let's just hope it doesn't rain anytime soon."

"I'll have a better shelter built in a day or two," Chef assured her. It was doable, had to be, Larisa hoped. "But I need to start now. Larisa, can you give me a hand?"

Ugh, really? Making sure he noticed it really, _really_ was a pain, she gave a grudging nod. Before they began, she couldn't resist writing,

 _this chick better be worth it_

"I hope so too," Chef told her, looking back at the shelter where Cass had begun taking care of the mystery woman's hand.

The construction took the whole day, Larisa spending the entire time wishing she was doing something else, and alone. Chef was nice, she supposed, as far as people went, but she still preferred to work alone. He talked almost incessantly, which many people would doubtless find entertaining, but for her was very emotionally draining. He told her about his past, how he'd been a prisoner sold into slavery, fetching a rather handsome price for his cooking abilities. How he'd spent his slavery cooking, baking, and doing all kinds of things to food in order to turn it into better food. How he'd been lucky enough to be drafted for the planet-wide space project (just like Larisa, and presumably Cass) and marched aboard a ship and stuffed into a cryosleep casket. The rest, he said, didn't have to be told.

At the end of the day, with the new barrack only a quarter done, Larisa fell asleep almost instantly, exhausted in body and soul.


	4. Windfall

**Windfall**

* * *

The meat would not last another day, so they ate all they could, and made sure Bob the cat had his fill. Cassie noticed right away that flower child wasn't very eager to continue work on the shelter, but she'd just have to suck it up. She seemed alright, but she'd have to pull her weight, they couldn't afford to be lazy or turn their noses up at some jobs. If the weather conspired against them, they could easily die of hypothermia or exposure without decent protection, and even the long-term plans couldn't wait. Sure, the seeds she'd sown would start popping their first green stalks out of the ground in a day or two, if the instructions on the seed packet were to be believed, but it'd still take a week or two for the plants to actually bear anything resembling edible produce.

As the two others worked – one with more enthusiasm than the other – Cassie took another look at the prisoner. Her ankles and wrists had been tied to the board of the shelter with the climbing rope they'd found in one of the survival kits. As she began changing the woman's bandage, the patient's eyelids fluttered.

"Hey… you awake?" Cassie said quietly. "Can you hear me?" Then she realized she was probably talking gibberish to this woman, who doubtless spoke some kind of strange language.

"W… water…"

Cassie needed a minute for her brain to process the word and realize it was Terran. How was this even possible? The chances of a civilization, or even lone human beings, living here for so many years and actually having a language even remotely similar to Terran was astronomically small. Then how did she –

Of course. Cassie only realized it now. They must not have been the only people who'd crashed. More longsleepers would have hit the planet surface, not just theirs. This was probably another passenger on the same ship they'd been on. They'd never known each other, after all, just packed on board a ship, most because they'd been selected in some kind of raffle or lottery. Others, like herself, purposely selected in gratitude for services rendered to their home nation.

That also meant there were others. Others who might be hostile – and unlike this one, actually capable. Maybe even organized. If Cassie had learned one thing from the old movies she'd watched during her free evenings on the ship, it was that in the case of a world-ending calamity, or a brave new world scenario, some people tried to rebuild their old civilization, while others let their selfish instincts, previously restricted by authority, run free and form raider groups. It might be a bit fanciful to think there were enough people on this planet to form an actual raider group, but it wouldn't hurt to be prepared either. Or at least keep the possibility in mind.

"I'll get you some water, hold on," she said, and went to fill a tin of the water they'd boiled during breakfast.

"She's awake," she briefly let the others know as they worked on the new barrack, Larisa precariously and rather ineptly holding a wooden plank in the air as Chef tried to stabilize it and slide it into place. The barrack they were building was bigger than the first shelter, and work was progressing nicely. Chef had clearly learned from the first building. Larisa, well, maybe she had too, although it didn't look like it.

"Ah, right," Chef grunted, trying to keep the plank in place. "Need a hand? Is she violent?"

Cass chuckled. "She's too mangled and too tied-up to be violent. I'm gonna see if I can talk to her, see if she's reasonable."

"Sure, just… well, be careful."

"Absolutely."

Larisa further endangered the balance of the already-wobbling plank by briefly giving Cass a thumbs-up, and Cass couldn't help but grin and realize flower child could be adorable when she had her moments.

She sat down next to the prisoner and set the water tin to her lips, carefully letting a bit of liquid leak onto the prisoner's lips. Most of it just ran back out of the side of the girl's mouth, down her cheek, but still she swallowed in greedy gulps. "Not too much," Cassie said, moving the tin away and setting it down beside her. Not only was it dangerous to let a dehydrated person drink too much at once, but it might also be useful to make it very clear to this girl that she was alive only because they'd allowed it.

"Th… thanks," the prisoner rasped. "What… happened?"

She'd taken a pretty hard blow to the head from Chef's plank, so it wasn't surprising she didn't remember much. "You sneaked into our camp, traded punches with one of our people until we… neutralized you."

"Ow m… my hand, it… it hurts so much."

"Yeah, not surprising. We had to shoot you."

The girl's eyes briefly flared open, "You sh-shot me?" After this short burst of panic energy, her eyelids fluttered again and she slowly slumped back into her semi-conscious state, though she clearly tried to fight it.

"It's alright, it's um… just your hand. It'll heal." She felt herself make a doubtful face. "We hope."

"Why… shot me?" she slurred. "Can't… remember."

"You were attacking one of us and very likely stealing supplies," Cassie scolded. "Stuff we desperately need."

"Sorry… just… so hungry."

"Yes, well, maybe if you'd just asked – " Cassie began, but she stopped talking when she noticed the girl had slipped into sleep – or unconsciousness – again. She took advantage of the moment to undo the bandages on her hand for a quick look, but she didn't like what she saw. The remains of her thumb and forefinger looked like raw hamburger, the surrounding skin bright red, and yellow fluid oozing out of several places. The bandages were sticky, and as Cassie pulled them, strings of slimy gunk made translucent rope bridges. She only knew basic first aid, but she recognized an infection when she saw one. On her home world, an infection was a mere nuisance, but here, without proper medical care, this could very well be lethal. She'd have to consult the others about this, but for now, there was nothing more she could do except giving it time and seeing how it evolved.

Flower child came in, took a seed packet and left again, but before she went outside, she gestured in Chef's direction and stuck up a thumb. Right, he could handle the rest on his own. Better to sow things as early as possible.

There was little she could do for their patient, so she took her rifle and set out to patrol the perimeter again. The girl had shown no signs of being part of a group or even having friends nearby, but that didn't mean there weren't any. She picked some berries during her walk, greedily gobbling them down – the taste was divine, as was the feeling of the juice slowly trickling down her throat – but there were so many she could stuff her pockets full of them and still leave half of them hanging on the bush. It was reassuring to know there were berry bushes nearby. In emergencies, they could always resort to these for a quick boost of energy and for the quieting of grumbling stomachs.

As she swallowed the last of the sweet fruit, she looked up and saw another one of the animals she'd shot the day before. But then, she'd approached it carelessly, perhaps if she slowly moved up to it, making herself a bit smaller, the beast wouldn't bolt. Quickly, she tied one of the ropes into a lasso, then approached, very carefully without making any sudden movements. When she was a metre or ten away, the animal looked up at her, its jaw moving as it kept right on chewing the grass. Slowly, Cassie extended her arm, showing the animal the berries in her hand. She had no idea if these things like them, but it was worth a try. At the very least, the offering of a gift of any form might put the creature less on the defensive.

Slowly, she came nearer. Every time she moved a bit more quickly, the animal tensed up, preparing to run. "Shhhh," she said quietly. "That's it, I just want to say 'hi'."

Just two metres away. The animal tensed up again and Cassie knew it had to be now or never. Just as the muffalo made to run, she threw the lasso, its loop catching the animal perfectly around the neck. With a loud _horf!_ , the bovine pulled at the rope, jerking Cassie forward several times before it abruptly stopped, just standing there, looking at her. Keeping the rope in one hand, Cassie again held out the handful of berries. The muffalo's head came closer, its nostrils flaring as it sniffed the berries. A few sniffs and the head turned away. Alright, no berries for you. Fine. She stuffed the fruit back into her pocket and pulled a few handfuls of grass from the ground, trying again. This time, the muffalo did approve, again after a fair bit of sniffing. Cassie felt a modest surge of triumph when the beast took the grass between its lips, worked it inside its mouth, and began chomping.

She risked coming a bit closer, her fingers carefully touching the animal's muzzle. It felt coarse, but not unpleasant. It reminded her of the horses she'd petted when she was a child. "Shhh, that's right. Nothing to be afraid of. What do you say about coming to live with us?"

The animal didn't reply, obviously, but when Cassie gently pulled the rope, it didn't resist. All she had to do now was lead it back to the shelter and Chef's dream of drinking hot milk in the morning would be one step closer.

* * *

Agh, dammit! Every time Chef tried to fix the boards on top of the new, larger shelter, one of the side planks fell off because the supports in the corners weren't stable enough. If he had someone to help hold the structure more steady, he'd be able to get the roof done, but Cassie was gone to God-knew-where, while Larisa was once again scratching in the dirt a ways further, with Bob the cat intently watching her. He wasn't sure how much help she'd be, anyway. She had a sort of grudging good will, but her capabilities clearly lay elsewhere than building. So did his, for that matter, but unlike the two ladies, his skills were currently mostly useless.

He tried again, standing on a wooden block to get the board high enough, but again, the structure wobbled and he had to let the plank drop. He also didn't have enough hands to hold both the plank, the hammer, _and_ the nail to fix it.

"You're doing that all wrong, buddy."

Chef jumped at the voice, stumbling off his wooden block and almost crashing down to the ground, just barely keeping his footing. A man had stood behind him, his hands in his sides, looking at the worthless excuse for a shelter. As Chef's heart settled down, he realized the guy wasn't hostile, or at least didn't look it.

"You can't just build a structure that big by wingin' it." The man nodded at the small shelter. "Tiny cabins, sure, you can just throw them together, but the size you're attempting, just hammering nails into boards and hoping it turns out okay isn't the way."

Trying to keep his startled breathing under control, Chef managed to ask," Wh… what do you mean?"

The man danced his fingers at Chef's dubious attempt at building. "You need to keep the boards on the walls together with dovetails. Here, look." He took out a welder-cutter of his own and grabbed one of the boards, cutting two notches into the end. Then he took another one, cut the same notches in it, and set the two boards together so they formed a corner, but with the notches catching into each other. "See? Much more solid, uses less nails, and keeps the whole thing together."

"Oh." Chef had no idea where the man, or his friendly-sounding bits of advice came from. It might be best to ask. "Sorry, but uh… where, I mean, how did you…?"

"Crashed longsleeper, just like you." He nudged his chin at the wrecked sarcophagi a ways off. "Glad to see some people survived. Was afraid I'd be stuck on this planet all on my own." He held out his hand. "Name's Squires. Terry Squires."

Still not entirely certain of the man's good intentions, Chef slowly took the man's hand and shook it. "Karl Johnson. Everyone calls me Chef, though."

He grinned. "Everyone, huh? All these people?"

"Well. The other two people I crashed with."

He seemed friendly enough, but he could have simply been trying to gain Chef's trust. Yet, somehow, Chef felt that this wasn't the case, not with any bad intentions at least. The guy had a friendly and open face, with blond hair combed back. His physique suggested he was a man who'd worked hard in his life, even though he looked to be only around twenty-five years old. Older than Chef, but certainly still young in a general sense. The roughness of his hands confirmed what Chef thought. This was a working man. Or had been before the space program.

"You uh, seem to know more about building than I do?"

He chuckled. "Certainly seems so, from what you've cooked up so far." His grin became wider. "Not trying to insult you."

"Oh no," Chef said, making sure to keep the conversation friendly. "It's horrible, I'm perfectly aware. I've been following this survival booklet, but…"

"Pft. They're trash when it comes to building. Good for whipping up a shelter while you wait for rescue, but for long-term things, no, you need to really know what you're doing."

"And you know what you're doing?"

"I should hope so," he said cheerfully. "Been building for the corporate sector ever since I subcontracted my father's steelworking enterprise to a megaconglomerate."

"Uh… okay." Chef wasn't really knowledgeable when it came to such terminology, but he assumed it was a good thing.

"Course I usually built with concrete and steel, but we did a lot of stuff with wood as well, you know, prestige projects." He noticed Chef's bewildered expression, and added, "But yeah, I can build stuff." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked around. "So. How many are you? Just the two of you? I assume that girl in the distance lives here too?"

"Uh… yeah. That's Larisa. She's mute, by the way. And there's Cassie, too. She's out watching the perimeter. Which um, she hasn't been doing perfectly, it seems."

"Right. Well," he said, yawning. "I'm kinda tired from scrounging for berries and eating bugs. Mind if I stay here? You can use a builder and I can use… well, a place to live."

"I'd have to talk to the others," Chef said, "But… I mean, sure, why not, I guess?"

If this man really had bad intentions, he wouldn't have gone through all this trouble. He was half a head taller than Chef and while he wasn't a hulking figure, it was clear that his strength easily dwarfed Chef's meagre physical prowess. If he was the violent or dangerous type, nothing stopped him from overpowering Chef and then having his way with Larisa. The fact that he suggested to join, rather than just braining them and stealing their stuff meant he'd at least be non-violent. And even though this sounded too good to be true, to have a professional builder amongst them, refusing him simply on a vague 'too good to be true'-basis would be madness. The others would have to agree though.

"Cool. I mean, I'd prefer not to spend my life on this planet lonely and miserable, in a well-built cabin but hungry and bored."

"Makes sense. But like I said, I can't promise anything, I mean, I'm not the only one here."

"Sure. While we wait, I'll help you get this thing built. Free of charge."

Without hesitation, the guy tore down the entire structure in a matter of minutes, then started over. He clearly hadn't been putting his money anywhere else than his mouth was, because he began work immediately, and much more efficiently than Chef ever could have. He quickly arranged the boards, cut notches in them, 'dovetails' he'd called them, and started building a solid floor after first measuring everything up and marking corners and walls. "You see," he explained as he worked, "most people start building right away, and then they waste time correcting their mistakes. But if you spend a few more minutes thinking and organizing, you're gaining loads of time in the long run because you're anticipating problems rather than reacting to them."

Chef could only say, "Uh huh."

The other man continued to explain, but pretty soon, Chef couldn't follow his exposé on construction anymore, but he was too embarrassed to say so. After a while, the guy stopped, laughed and said, "Sorry, I've lost you, haven't I?"

"… maybe just a bit."

With a grin, he said, "Go on, I'll take care of this, you don't have to stay, it'll be fine."

If he said so. He let the probable new colony member build and walked on over to the old shelter, which looked laughable compared to the new building that was being set up. He might as well go check on the patient, but he could see very little change in her condition. She was still unconscious, slowly breathing. Not much they could do but wait for her to come to. Chef hoped the girl wouldn't suffer a brain haemorrhage, as could supposedly happen after a hard blow to the head. If that happened, it was curtains for the girl no matter what.

No point worrying about something he couldn't change. He might as well make himself useful, and he knew how. There was a lot of scrap that could be salvaged from the wrecks of the longsleepers, and if he welded some pieces together, he might be able to build some kind of wood burner. Set that into a table, and he'd have a stove to cook some decent food on. Roasting meat above a campfire was unhealthy and inefficient. They had their tins, and they could be used for cooking as well as eating.

He walked towards the first longsleeper – Cassie's – and cut off six square-ish plates of metal. He welded five of them into an awkward-looking but serviceable cube with one open side, then sliced several air intake holes into one of the sides. The last bit of metal he turned into a lid, using the joints of his own mess tin lid so it could open and close. It'd probably belch smoke, but it'd work. Then he built a small table, set the cube into it and made sure to fashion the top of the table into a metal grill so the heat came upward and heated the tins above it, while the smoke went out the back.

It wasn't a gas-burner, but it would get the job done much better than an open fire.

"Chef. Chef, look!"

It was Cassie's voice. He turned around, the welder-cutter still in his hand, and saw her approaching, and damn it if it wasn't one of those muffalos trotting lazily behind her. She'd actually caught one, bless her!

She smiled broadly and called out, "I can tell by your face that you're thinking the same thing I am."

"If it's hot milk for breakfast, then I am!"

"We don't know if it's safe to drink or not," she said, close enough now to talk on a normal volume, "but it can't be toxic if we boil it, right?"

Chef was so happy to see the animal that he just shrugged and said, "Even if it could be, I'm still risking it. But uh, it's female, right? Because…" He bent over and saw an udder hanging between the beast's legs, with six bluish-pink teats prominently visible. He sure hoped those dispensed milk and not some kind of horrible goo. "Right. Can you milk cows?"

"I've done it once or twice, but I'm pretty sure flower child will be happy to take that job." She looked around. "Where is she anyway?" It was then she noticed the newly-arrived prospective colony member. "Who's _that_?"

"Oh yeah," Chef said. "Him. His name's uh, Squares or something. Just wandered in a few hours ago, said he was good at building but pretty terrible at finding food. Asked if he could say."

She put her hands in her sides and cocked her head. "And let me guess. You said yes?"

It was clear she was expecting an affirmative response, and Chef felt a bit insulted that she'd assume for him to be so naïve. " _No_ , I said I'd discuss it with you two first. He said that was fine and that he'd keep himself busy in the meantime."

"Hm."

"I'm not an idiot, Cassie."

"Mm? Oh, no. No, sorry," she said hastily, realizing what she'd implied. "I didn't mean for it to sound like that, it's just… in my job, I learned not to trust anybody right away, and I've had some bad experiences with people who trusted others in my name." She didn't take her eyes off the new guy while she said it.

It was a sensible explanation, Chef supposed, but she'd still made it clear – consciously or not – what she thought of his decision-making capabilities. "Yeah, well, we're not at your job."

She hadn't even heard, looking at the man intently, gnawing at her lower lip. At length she said, "I'll go see what his deal is. If he's got bad intentions, I'll probably know within half an hour."

Chef didn't fail to notice that she took the rifle off her shoulder and held it ready as she walked down to the under-construction shelter. The new guy turned his head as she approached and raised his cutter-welder in a gesture of greeting, coming down from his roof framework. Chef observed them both for a bit. At first, Cassie kept a safe distance the rifle at the ready, but as the conversation progressed, she became less cautious, gradually lowering the rifle and closing the precautionary distance. Seemed she saw less reason to be distrustful as the conversation went on, so Chef went back to finalizing his stove design.

When he looked up again, Cass was walking back towards him. "He seems sincere. Couldn't catch him in any lies and his story was consistent. Too fluent and expansive to be rehearsed. I told him he could stay."

Chef had to stop himself from commenting on that last statement, and he merely stuck to, "Well, if you say it's alright, so do we, I s'pose."

"Yeah," Cassie said, missing the point of his remark entirely. "I think he's okay." She sighed. "So! Whatcha been making?"

In a way, he was glad to have something else to talk about. "Oh, right. Well, I figured, we can't keep cooking over an open fire like savages, so well… behold our cooking stove."

She laughed and said, "It looks functional, that's for sure."

"Hey, at least it's a step towards civilization. Now all we need is a functional dinner table and some chairs. Because eating without a table, that kind of discomfort can cause all sorts of destructive nervous breakdowns."

"Huh," Cassie noticed, looking towards the new shelter. "Seems flower child finally found someone she actually likes."

Chef followed her gaze and saw Larisa standing with Squires, laughing, at the door to the new shelter. Larisa bent over and threw something, then Squires pumped a victorious fist in the air and walked towards the wooden pin he'd driven into the ground, picking up the bent pieces of scrap iron they'd thrown at it. Bob the cat watched from the shelter doorstep with lazy curiosity.

"A game of horseshoes," Cassie remarked. "Some light entertainment to relieve the existential dismay of being marooned on a planet, an impossible amount of lightyears away, while we most likely slept through the day that the Sun expanded into a red giant and swallowed the Earth."

"Damn," Chef told her. "Way to make a harmless little game sound soul-crushingly awful."

She chuckled and said, "I'll play you when they're done. We should start a league or something." She walked down to the shelter, calling to Chef, "But for now, I'm going to build a horseshoe pin of my own, to keep this cow-beast from wandering off."

While Larisa stood intently petting the muffalo, Cassie held the long wooden pin in place for the new guy to hammer it in with a big chunk of granite. With the head sufficiently flattened, there was no risk of the rope sliding off the post, so the muffalo was secure in place, with plenty of slack on the rope to let it wander pretty much to its heart's content.

"Well, that's that," she said, looking up at the sky to estimate the hour. "Still time for me to go look for some food. I might still get lucky and find something to shoot."

The new guy grinned and said, "Can't say I'm not looking forward to a warm meal. A diet of bugs and roots gets old very fast."

Larisa pointed at the muffalo's udders and gave him two thumbs-up.

"Ah," he said to her, "hold on."

With the waste of the wood he had from the shelter-building, he quickly whittled three legs and a seat, hammering the whole thing together with nails, then holding it out to Larisa. "For successful milking."

With a smile, the girl took the stool and trotted off towards the muffalo.

* * *

What the Hell had just happened? Cassie found herself on her back, her eyes staring at the sky and her ears ringing. She felt several painful spots on her back and arms, bruises made when she hit the stony ground. Her head spun and thinking was difficult.

After a few moments, her vision slowly sharpened again and her brain began untying itself. She'd shot something… what had it been again? Some kind of… animal?

There was a smacking sound somewhere, but she didn't know where it came from.

She was still too numb to move, and just getting her thoughts in order was a challenge already. It was difficult to breathe, her lungs still sore from whatever it was that had buffeted her backwards. Her hands clawed for her rifle, her training kicking in and telling her to think about her safety first. Using it as a crutch, she got back to her feet, her head still spinning.

The smacking sound continued.

Focusing her vision, she saw a rather gruesome vista. Some kind of creature had been torn apart, seemingly from the inside out, torn meat and shattered bones radiating out in a grisly red sunburst on the dirt, the grass still smouldering. Her thoughts slowly clicked back into place. She'd shot the thing, a large furry mammal (probably?) with strange yellow growths on its back. And this had happened. Were these things explosive? It seemed so, unless her rifle had somehow loaded itself with HE rounds when she wasn't looking.

Wait, but… that wasn't all. She'd shot the thing in the torso, but it hadn't died right away. It had staggered and wobbled for a few more moments before falling over, while she approached. So that meant the bullet hadn't caused the explosion – it couldn't have. So how had the thing just blown into pieces right then and there?

Incomprehensible. Perhaps the yellow growths were laden with some kind of substance that reacted with the enzymes that came free in the animal's blood when it died. Was that even possible? Anything was, apparently, on this world.

It was only then that she became aware of the constant smacking sound. She turned her head to see where it came from, and a little further stood a four-legged creature, its head bent low, tearing strips of meat of the fragmented animal carcass, seemingly oblivious to her.

It sure looked like one of those dogs they used to keep in the colder climes back on Earth, a husky. When Cassie clicked her tongue to draw its attention (rifle raised, because you never knew), its head came up, its ears perked. Good sign, she'd learned in training. Ears flat, that was the opposite of a good sign. "Hey boy," she said to it, taking care to keep her voice soft and gentle.

The husky cocked its head, letting out a short, low-whine, which sounded inquisitive. The creature itself didn't look feral, either. It wasn't as groomed as domesticated dogs on Earth were, but its eyes were intelligent and expectant. Its tongue flicked out, lashed over its muzzle, and went back in.

It usually helped to appear less threatening, so Cassie went to one knee and slowly extended her hand. "C'mere boy, come closer."

The dog kept watching her, seemingly determining if she was dangerous or not.

Eventually it slowly took a step forward, then another.

"That's it, come on." Domesticating a dog would be immensely valuable, because unlike a cat, which really just served as company and caught small pests, a dog could actually be practically useful, guarding the shelter at night and keeping predators and the smaller varieties of four-legged thieves away from the camp.

The dog seemed to have determined that she wasn't a threat for now, so it came trotting towards her and pushed its shout against the back of her hand. She let it, knowing that in order to put animals at ease, you had to let them experience your scent. It was like reading the newspaper for them.

After giving it a few moments to sniff, she tried petting the dog's head, but it immediately recoiled and bared its teeth. "Whoa, easy boy," she said to it, extending her hand again. It came back to sniff, and this time she tried stroking the underside of its head rather than the top of its skull. That did the trick, the dog closing its eyes in contentment as Cassie's fingers scratched its chin. The animal permitted itself to enjoy Cassie's affections, and it didn't take long before Cassie knew she could stand up and let it follow her home.

Evening was falling, and she looked forward to a good night's sleep. She imagined, so did the others. She took a few scraps of torn and half-broiled meat along to make sure the dog would have every reason to stay with them, and began the hike back.


	5. Cut the Branch

**.**

 **Cut the Branch**

* * *

A foot in the side woke Cassie up from a dream she didn't even remember before it was over. She saw Larisa standing over her, her hands in her sides, her form sharply contrasting with the pale grey morning sky.

"Mm… what?"

Flower child pointed a thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of the repurposed prison. Oh, right, the girl they'd captured. Risa's face bore an expression somewhere between impatient and alarmed. Something was wrong.

Cassie rose, took her rifle and followed Larisa into the shack, even though she felt groggy, hungry, and her mouth tasted like she'd been gulping motor oil. She saw Larisa put two fingers on her own forehead and pull them away as if they got burned just touching her brow. Fever. Shit, seemed like their new guest wasn't too long for this world, then.

She kneeled by the captured girl, Larisa standing over them.

"Hey… can you talk?" She suppressed a yawn but didn't succeed entirely.

"H… hand. Let… let me see."

It was dark in the shack, so Cassie used her welder-cutter as a light.

The girl's pretty face looked much worse than it had in the beginning. Black rings were around her eyes, and her skin looked sunken and stretched. "Oh… oh my," she breathed when she saw her hand. "Oh… oh no. I'm… I'm going to die."

Cassie knew why she said it. Half her hand had turned black, the skin letting go in places, like lettuce that had been lying around so long it had started to liquefy. The rest was a red and yellow ruin. It stank immensely.

"You… you sure? I mean, do you… know anything about medicine?"

"A… a little," she breathed. "More than… you guys, I th… think?"

"There nothing we can do?"

She weakly shook her head. "Mm. If the s... sepsis won't kill me outright, then the… the infection will… travel uh... uh… upward until it r-reaches my heart, and, and then…"

"I'm… sorry," Cassie could only say.

"There is… one thing we can… try."

"What's that?"

She held up the blackening, oozing ruin of her hand, using what little strength she had left to give herself a look of determination. "Head it… off at the pass."

"What do you mean?"

"Cut it off."

Cass heard Larisa abruptly turn and stomp out of the shack.

"You… you sure? I mean, cutting off your hand will – "

"Only way," she breathed, her voice weak.

"But I don't know, I mean, I've never… and neither have any of us. And it'll just get infected again."

"N-no. If I… If I survive… you can… get me healroot. Smear it… smear it on the wound before… before it infects. Stops bleeding too. I… I know what it looks like."

Cassie slowly let a mouthful of boiled water run into the other girl's mouth. "I… I'm sorry, but we tried that already."

"Nu-uh," the girl croaked. "That was… regular aloe. Nice but… not powerful enough. I mean some… something else." She explained, a long stalk, curved at the top, with slightly luminous blue pods at the ends. Cassie'd seen those already, not too far off.

Was this girl really suggesting they'd amputate her hand? Without sedation? An operating theatre? Sterile tools? Any medical knowledge? "Look, I, I know you want to live, but none of us know – "

"I do. I know. I'll… walk you through it."

Chef's voice came from behind her. "Did I understand Larisa right? Are you going to try and perform surgery?"

"It's what she asks," Cassie said back. "… But I don't know if – "

"Only chance I… got. I take," she chuckled, the breath grinding in her throat, "full responsibility."

"Alright," Cassie managed to say. "Let's do this. Chef, get your knife."

"Steri… lize in boiling… boiling water. Or over… flame."

"And get Larisa, tell her to make paste of those weird roots we've seen at the edge of the camp, the ones with the blue thingies on top." Cassie tried to maintain her cool composure, but inside, she was close to freaking out. They were going to amputate a _hand_. A living, breathing person's hand. At least the double agent she'd shot in the butt had been an enemy, and it had happened without thinking, but this… holy Hell, this was the real deal.

Chef had gone outside to sterilize the knife, and she was left alone with the girl. "You uh, sure you want to do this?"

The girl's lips formed a feeble smile. "You… sure _you_ want to?"

She had to admit, "No. But at least I won't have to actually experience it."

"It'll… be painful but… beats being dead."

"I s'pose."

Chef had sterilized the knife be holding it over the morning campfire and came back in. Despite how discouraging it was to see his hands tremble, Cassie was actually somewhat relieved that she wasn't alone. The new arrival, Squires, had followed them in and said, "I don't know jack about medicine, but uh, how can I help?"

"You can…" the girl croaked. "Help hold me down." A raw chuckle followed.

The new guy licked his lips nervously and finally said, "… sure. I guess."

"Take me… outside, please?" the wounded girl rasped. "If I don't… survive. Want to see the sun."

More than understandable, and Cassie was happy to oblige. After all, it postponed the actual horror for a few more minutes.

Chef slid his hands under the girl's arms while Cassie held the knife. Squires took her legs and on the count of three, the carefully lifted her up and carried her through the doorless doorway, Cassie spreading her jacket on the ground. Morning grey still covered the heavens, but nothing they could do to fix that. At least she was under the open sky now.

"Pft. Shitty... weather. Just my luck. Alright. No time like… present."

Cassie knew she'd have the dubious honour of performing the actual amputation. Chef's skills with a knife limited themselves purely to the culinary, and as Squires had said, he didn't know jack about medicine. "Squires?"

"Mm?"

"Get Larisa. We'll need everyone."

"But she – "

"Don't argue with me on this, please. I'm high-strung enough as it is."

He thankfully understood and ran to the new, under-construction shelter to bring Flower Child back. At this moment, Cassie didn't give a shit how squeamish she was. They had to survive, and everyone had to pitch in, including during the horrible moments. It was the only way they'd survive.

Larisa did come back with Squires, but she was pale as a sheet, her lips trembling with nerves and her eyes pleading.

"You don't even have to watch," Cassie rapped at her. "Just sit on her legs and hold them down. Look the other way. Put wax in your ears, I don't care. Just keep her from kicking out."

Silently, Larisa obeyed, putting her weight on the injured girl's skin, her back to what would soon be a horror scene.

"Alright, I think we're ready."

"Got any… booze?"

She could use some herself, and so could the others, given the lack of colour in their faces. "Sorry. No."

"Ah… well."

"You're going to have to tell me what to do."

"Take… knife. Put edge against… dimple formed between base of… thumb and… radius."

Gently, Cassie moved the sharp edge of the knife down the girl's thumb and felt it slide snugly between the bones. Her bowels felt like knotted wood.

"Then just… start cutting. Use as much… force as you can." She managed another short laugh. "Not like you… have to worry about... damaging anything."

"I… think I'm going to be sick," Cassie heard escape from her lips. She tried her hardest to keep it from showing, but she was terrified, so much she could actually feel the sweat break out of every single pore on her brow.

"Be… fine." Her eyes suddenly lit up as much as they could. "By the way… if I die… don't blame… you for anything."

"That's… good to know." It was, but she could do no more than acknowledge it at this point, even though it mattered immensely. "You ready?"

"No one can... ever be ready for this." She assumed that was a 'yes'.

"Chef?"

He looked back at her, his weight on the patient's left shoulder, his eyes betraying barely contained panic, but he nodded.

"Squires?"

He was in the same position at her left shoulder, and managed to say, "This wasn't what I thought would happen when I won my ship ticket."

"I'm… ready." The girl said, her eyes fixing on Cassie's. "Are… _you_?"

"I have to be. Oh God, I'm sorry for everything that's about to happen."

"Procene."

"Mm? What?"

"Procene," the girl repeated, her eyes calm but her face tense. "It's my name."

Oh! Right. Cassie knew why she said it. It wasn't as a means of introduction, the girl just didn't want to die nameless.

Her brow hardened and she grunted, "Now get to cutting. Handle high… blade low… put your weight on the handle. Like… cutting off a chicken leg. Just the same."

Cassie's breath came in short, shallow gasps as she shifted her weight and prepared to exert power on the hilt. _Oh God oh God oh God._

"Do it."

With a high-pitched, breaking grunt, Cassie put her weight on the knife handle, the sharp plasteel sinking in through the girl's tanned skin, blood welling up against the sides of the blade. The girl screamed, pounding her free hand on the ground, but her injured arm was pinned down by Squires, and didn't move.

Cassie pushed down again, a wet sucking noise coming from the wrist as the knife bit deeper. Another push and blood came spurting up, covering her mangled hand and forearm. The girl shrieked in pain but when Cassie hesitated, she heard her screeching voice, _"Keep going! Don't stop! Ignore my screams, just cut!"_ The rest was inarticulate.

She again put her weight down on the knife, and it sank even deeper, catching against bone.

" _Cut, cut, keep cutting!"_ The rest was drowned out by more screaming. Cassie heard the sound of someone vomiting, but she did as she was told, pushing the blade down and sawing it back and forth.

The girl tried to scream more instructions, but she couldn't stop herself from letting out only inarticulate screeches. Cassie did manage to discern, _"Wrench between the bones!"_ somewhere in there. She made the mistake of looking at the girl's face and saw a twisted mask of pure agony, saliva dribbling in thick globs down her chin and cheeks, snot on her upper lip. The air was rank with the stink of vomit, urine, and worse.

She looked back at the horror in front of her and pushed down again, now wrenching the knife from side to side to separate the bones from each other. When it happened, Cassie felt as if she was no longer a participant in the grisly scene, but merely observing, as if someone else was guiding her body while she watched, a terrible calm coming over her. A wet, short _crack_ sounded and the knife was through, Cassie's weight sending it tearing through the rest of the girl's wrist, separating it from the arm in a flood of red. The dead hand lay still, the stump of the arm moving and spurting red.

"Bandages! Bandages!" the girl's voice sounded, hoarse but still somehow shrieking. "Stop the bleeding!"

Cassie saw herself taking the bandages they'd sterilized and pushing them against the wound as hard as she could. Somewhere, far away, a voice screamed "tourniquet!" and her hands tied the bandages around the girl's forearm, tightening them as hard as they could to stop the bleeding. Pale, slender hands came near, trembling, and pushed the healroot paste against the bandages, the stuff (hopefully) stopping the bleeding and warding against infection. With any luck, it might even work as a bit of a topical sedative.

"The… the… the… healroot takes… a few… a few… a few…"

Cassie felt herself being roughly inserted into her own body again, and she once again felt the warmth of the girl's arm between her fingers, the foul smells in her nostrils and the metallic taste in her mouth. Her tongue pounded in pain from where she'd bitten it.

"… minutes to… to… work…" the girl panted, ""Keep pressure on until it stops… bleeding. Relax... tourniquet for one... second every... ten seconds." Her eyes rolled in their sockets, her jaw slack and her tongue flopped in her mouth like a dead eel. "It's… done," she managed to breathe, the air coming in short, shallow gasps. "Holy crackers… that was…"

"I… I can't believe…" Cassie stammered. "We actually… we actually… You did incredible, Procene, Just… incredible."

This girl had just had her hand sawed off without any sedation, not even a half-bottle of whiskey, and she'd remained conscious throughout the whole ordeal. Cassie couldn't imagine what she'd felt, what she'd been through. It had felt harrowing enough to actually perform the act, let alone to suffer it.

"You too…" she actually had the magnanimity to say. "All of us." Her head rolled on her neck, her eyelids fluttering. "Now if you'll… excuse me, I'm… going to pass out now, if that's… alright."

Before Cassie could answer, the girl slipped away.

She looked around at her fellow colonists, all of the faces as haggard and dismal as hers probably was, and said, "I don't know about you guys, but I sure could use a drink right now."

"I'd chop off my own hand for a quart of scotch," Squires said sullenly, his attempt at humour lost even on him. Larisa wasn't in any state to answer, lying to the side, fainted, with the bowl of healroot paste still in her hand. The girl might be wimpy, but she'd done what was necessary. They all had.

"I'll stay with her for now," Chef said through dry vocal folds, his hands pressed firmly against the bloody bandages. "Keep watch."

Squires just sat there, sullen and numb. "I'm going to complete the shelter after… a few moments. I'm too new to take a day off. And I'll feel better if I keep busy. Help Risa to her feet first."

Cassie rose, but as she did, she felt all her strength leaving her and a sharp headache setting on. The sounds of the wind stirring the grasses was suddenly very sharp, as was the sound of the knife slipping from her fingers and burying itself in the earth. "I'm going to… sit over there for a bit and be a zombie for the rest of the day. You two can… dispose of the hand."


	6. Safe Haven

**.**

* * *

 **Safe Haven**

* * *

Another day on the Rim. Chef wiped the sand from his eyes as he stared at the boiling tin of water. He'd slept pretty well, all things considered. The experience yesterday had been something else. Squires had watched over the girl in the first half of the night, then Larisa, of all people, had taken over. And it was Larisa that was now emerging from the rickety shack where they kept their patient. Procene, her name was. He hoped she was alright, and since no news tended to be good news, he assumed that was indeed the case. The girl had earned the right to live, and then some.

"How is she?" he asked Larisa, who trudged past him, her eyes bleary.

She made a so-so wobbly gesture with her hands and disappeared in the sleeping barrack. The surgery hadn't done wonders for the girl's social aptitude. He'd wanted to ask her to milk the muffalo, but it was clear what the answer would be if he did, so he let it go.

Cassie came out not long after, coming to sit by him. "Whoo," she grunted. "Water for breakfast."

"Actually," Chef said, "it's going to be tea. Larisa found some leaves that have a pretty nice flavour. Not sure it's actual tea, but I mean… the principle's the same." He dumped the yellow-green leaves in the boiling water. "I s'pose it's got to steep about five minutes, like most tea?"

"Mm." Cassie sat on the ground, hugging her knees. Even though she was dead tired, Chef again was struck by how lovely she was. There was no romantic feelings or anything on his part, just… it felt nice being on this far-away planet with this pretty girl. Larisa wasn't all that special to look at, bless her. Not ugly, just… plain. Cassie was pleasing on the eyes, no doubt. It was superficial of him to think in those terms, but really, he felt that it was perfectly alright as long as it didn't involve any lechery or other base desires. It just made him cheerful to see her slightly upturned nose and her chocolate brown eyes. Maybe it was stupid, but for the first time, Chef felt happy to be here. He'd spent his time so far feeling worried, but that was a waste of energy. He was here, with nice people, trying to survive and build a home to live in, and he actually felt like they might even make it.

"So how's our patient?"

"Huh, what?" Cassie's question pulled him back to the present.

"The poor thief we butchered?"

"Ah. Uh, Larisa said, um, well, gestured that she was still alive, doing uh, reasonably well?"

"Let's go check."

That wasn't a bad idea. This tea would probably still taste somewhat decently if oversteeped, and the water was far too hot now anyway. He removed the tin from the fire and let it cool in the grass, then followed Cassie.

"Hey, Cassie?" he felt an urgent need to say it. "Um, I just wanted to say, that what you did yesterday, well, that took some huge brass balls… in a manner of speaking."

She laughed. "I'm still shaking, so don't be too impressed."

"Still. I don't think any of us would be able to, well, you know. Just lop a hand off like that."

"Yeah, you would've," she turned her head and smiled at him. "I'm not special, we're all capable of remarkable things when we need to be."

Chef didn't feel special at all, just a stupid cook from a backward land.

They went in and kneeled by the neo-amputee. She was unconscious, or asleep, Chef didn't know the difference, but she was breathing. That, already, was a miracle in itself, considering how ridiculously amateur the impromptu surgery had been conducted. It was dark, but by the light of their welder-cutters, they could see that the blood on the bandages covering the stump of the girl's arm was mostly dried. Good sign, Chef supposed. Her face, too, looked less gaunt, the black rings around her eyes less dark… if that wasn't a trick of the limited light.

"She's asleep, I think," Cassie whispered. "Usually, they say that if a patient makes it through the night, they have a good chance of surviving. But that might just be bullshit."

"I have no idea."

"I'll watch by her today. Maybe you and Squires can see about building something new? We'll need roofs over our heads if we want to make it through fall and winter. Who knows, we might even be able to build a separate room for everyone."

"That'd be the day." He stood up. "Alright, let me know if you need a break."

"M-hm."

Squires sat by the fire, his hair dishevelled and his face scrunched up. "Heya Chef." He yawned and stretched. "I could probably sleep for days." Bob the cat and Noah the dog were actually playing together, rolling over each other and bopping each other on the face with their paws. Chef had always thought cats and dogs hated each other and fought to the death if they met, but seemed that wasn't always true.

"Me too. But hey, we can't sit around being lazy, right." He poured them both the lukewarm, oversteeped tea.

"Nope. I've got an idea, too. After we get the barrack done, shouldn't take long, we could build ourselves a sort of mess room? Like, a kitchen and a small refectory. We can't eat outside forever, sooner or later we'll get rainy days." Not today though, the air was a cold morning blue.

"Sure, yeah." Chef felt his stomach growl, however. And with Cassie watching Procene, there'd be no food coming in today, at least not right away. He didn't know how many packets of survival paste they still had, but they'd need a sustainable food source soon. The plants Risa had sown wouldn't mature for a few days yet, although when he looked carefully, he already saw bright green little stalks peep out of the ground where she'd sown. Those super-seeds were pretty damn amazing. And the tea wasn't too terrible either. Bitter, but refreshing.

"We'll still need to use wood, though. I don't think we're ready to start building things out of stone just yet. I don't know much about mining or quarrying, not enough to do it safely, and I'm wagering you guys don't either?"

"Don't think so, no."

Squires stood up, went to fetch an MRE packet and tossed one to Chef while he squeezed his empty in his mouth. "Best get started or I'll fall asleep at the campfire."

They did, finishing work on the barrack rather quickly, putting the last of the ceiling boards into place. Squires coated them with sap he'd drained from trees to make them somewhat water-resistant, and just like that, they had a place to sleep. "Hey, you know what?" Squires said as they worked.

"What?"

"That big heifer over there," he pointed at the domesticated muffalo, "looks like it's got some serious wool on its back. We could try shaving it. Use it for beds?"

"That's… actually a pretty great idea. Maybe Cassie knows how. Or Larisa. They seem to have some idea about animal care."

"Mm, let's hope so."

They went on building, getting the ground ready for a new project, a kitchen-slash-refectory. But as Squires looked at the terrain and planned the lay-out, he changed his idea. A separate kitchen and refectory, with a wall in between. He explained it was cleaner and safer, especially since there would also be butchering going on in the kitchen. Chef didn't mind, an extra wall was no big deal with how fast the welder-cutters made the whole business.

"We also want tables," Chef explained as they sawed some floorboards. "Entire colonies have burned to the ground because people didn't have tables to eat at. Then when we're done, you can move your stove and your butcher's table inside, so you've got a clean cabin you can cook in, how's that?"

"Sounds great." It did.

With Squires' excellent advice and building knowledge, constructing a second log cabin proceeded very quickly. The guy had clearly learned from the previous experiences, and this time the work went exponentially faster. By the time lunch came around, they'd already laid the groundwork for the kitchen and had begun raising the walls, one doorway leading outside, and the other to the future refectory. When they saw the sun rise high in the sky, Larisa appeared with a tin of milk for each of them. They drank in silent enjoyment, then kept working, pausing only to squeeze another MRE packet into their mouths.

It was around noon when they heard three clangs. It was Larisa hitting a mess tin signalling lunch. She hadn't cooked, of course, but the berries and last of the exploding critter meat were a filling repast, for Cassie too when she took a break to sit by them, telling them their ward had woken up once or twice and seemed coherent, even quite positive despite the loss of her hand. They'd had a few short conversations between fevered sleeping bouts, and it seemed she was going to be alright. Squires asked her if she thought the girl might stay with them, and Cassie said she had no doubt. Things really were going great. Sure, the girl had tried to steal, but she'd been hungry and desperate, so everyone seemed willing to overlook that. Chef wondered what kind of skills she had. Probably very little expertise in survival, judging from recent events. And what skills she did have might be quite hampered by the loss of a hand. He shuddered at the memory.

After lunch, work proceeded for Chef and Squires. The guy was pleasant to work with, offering all kinds of knowledge tidbits about construction. Turned out he was also a bit of a tinkerer, enjoying himself by taking apart machines and putting them back together, describing it as a sort of guilty pleasure. That might actually be useful.

By the time afternoon rolled around, the kitchen was pretty much done, and Larisa had passed by with another tin of milk. As they took a drink, Squires suggested, "Come on, let's play some horseshoes. Take a break."

Nothing wrong with that. All work and no play and all that. Larisa clapped her hands excitedly, her face eagerly questioning.

Squires laughed, "Of course you can join!"

The three of them divided the six bent bits of metal amongst themselves, Squires taking the first turn, his toss missing the pin by ten centimetres. Chef tossed next, his piece hitting the pin but glancing off, ending up farther than Squires'. Chef didn't fail to notice how Larisa leaned against Squires while she watched. Those two were certainly getting along.

Larisa detached herself from Squires and let her metal sail through the air. It skidded to a halt right at the foot of the pole.

"Whey," Squires whooped. "You're in the lead." But then he bopped his elbow against hers. "But not for long. Now watch me make the perfect throw." He bent forward, the piece of metal swaying in his hand, his eyes focused on the horseshoe pin.

Instead of throwing, he froze, looking beyond the metal post. "… what is that?"

Chef and Risa followed his gaze, and now noticed Noah barking near the campfire, her eyes also on the horizon. Bob the cat also looked to be on high alert, his back arched.

Someone was coming. Running, looked like. It was too far to make out, but whatever or whoever it was, it was heading straight for the camp.

"Cass!" Chef hollered, his eyes still on the running figure. "Cassie!" He drew his knife, knowing he couldn't use it properly anyway, at least not for this purpose.

"I don't think…" Squires muttered, squinting in the distance. "Look, he's waving his hands."

He was right, the person running towards them, hell for leather, was flapping his hands – it looked like 'his' hands, at least – in a panic, flailing them about wildly. Looking more terrified than hostile.

Cass emerged from the hut, her rifle in her hand. "Noah," she rapped, clicking her tongue. Amazingly, the dog ran up to them, standing at the legs of her mistress and growling at the approaching person. Cassie shouldered her rifle and took aim. "Any idea who that could be?"

Chef and Squires replied in unison, "No."

Larisa slapped Cassie's shoulder with the back of her hand and pointed at the man running. Chef saw it too. This guy wasn't running towards them as much as he was running away from something. Now, they could hear a panicked voice shrieking something that sounded like 'help'.

Cassie licked her lips and aimed. The running man was getting closer now, close enough for the colonists to see that he was a skinny teenager, dressed in shredded pants and a torn shirt. The cries were definitely for help. Behind him, about thirty metres, ran someone else, a man in jeans with a fur jacket, brandishing… something.

As they watched in indecision, the pursuer kept the thing in his hands steady, and the next moment, a shot rang out, making them all flinch as the bullet whizzed past its target and struck a tree only ten metres from where Chef and his friends were standing.

"I don't trust either of them, but only one of them is putting us in danger right now," Cassie muttered, looking down the barrel of her rifle. She fired, making Chef's left ear ring, but the bullet went wide, rustling the bushes behind the guy with the revolver. Another shot came, this one impacting the ground next to Larisa's feet. The girl gasped in surprise and Squires immediately grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back, behind the wall of the shelter.

"Best take cover too," Cassie said to Chef in a clipped voice, taking aim again. Chef wasted no time and joined his friends behind the shelter wall while Cassie kneeled to make herself a smaller target. She fired again, and from his relatively safe spot, Chef saw a cloud of blood erupt from the pursuing man's abdomen. He stumbled, but kept up the pursuit, blood spraying from his gut as he went. Somehow keeping to his feet even though his upper body lurched from side to side, the man brought his weapon up again, the revolver swaying on the end of his trembling arm, but Cassie beat him to it. The top of the man's head blew apart in a red mist of blood and brains, and his body crashed to the ground, sending up clouds of dirt as it did.

The running man had reached them by now, and scampered into the dirt at Cassie's feet. Chef ran forward, brandishing his knife, but it wasn't necessary. The teenager did nothing but crawl backward, his eyes in the direction his pursuer had come from, ignoring the growling dog between him and his saviour.

Cassie stood motionless, her rifle falling to the ground, tears in her eyes. Behind him, Chef heard Larisa's sobs as she wept into Squires' shirt.

Ignoring the fleeing man, Chef took hold of Cassie's shoulders, trying to look eyes with her. "Cass. Cass, are you alright?"

She was quiet for a moment, then rasped, "I... I killed someone."

"I know." It felt unreal to Chef at the moment, like he didn't realize he'd just seen a human being's head get torn apart. Perhaps there was a reason he was the only one still functioning. For him, it wasn't the first time he'd seen someone die. The guards had sometimes used lethal force on his fellow slaves. He'd seen at least three of them get shot, one of them in the head. "Cass, hey. You also saved someone."

Abruptly, her legs gave out and she fell down on her ass, sitting up, still with her face vacant.

On the ground, the refugee lay panting, his eyes closed and arms spread, Noah still growling low. With Cassie completely fallen apart, Chef would have to take action himself. He snatched the rifle up from the ground and pointed it at the prone teenager, ignoring how horrible it felt for him to hold such an instrument of death. "You. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

The guy opened his eyes and raised his hands to show they were empty, breathing hard. He must've run the legs out of his body. "I'm…. My name… is Odile. Odile Adams. I was… just lost… and these… two guys… captured me… said they… wanted to…" his breath came too rapidly to continue and he had to stop talking, getting the wind back into his lungs. He tried again, "Make me… sex slave. I managed to… stab the… first guy but… other guy saw me… when I tried to escape."

Chef knew, sadly, that young pubescent boys tended to be prized as carnal trophies for degenerates whose depravity knew no bounds. Especially adolescents who looked thin and somewhat androgynous, like this one.

"I'm… no threat, I swear. Oh god… thank you for… saving me, I thought I was dead. Or worse."

Chef heard the sounds of Larisa and Squires' footsteps as they came to stand next to him.

"I saw… the smoke coming from your fire and ran… for a night and half a day. The guy came after me… thought I'd lost him but… suddenly there again. When I rested. Had almost caught up to me."

Cassie's shaking hand came to rest on his shoulder, the other gently taking the rifle from him. She slowly lowered it, but made sure she could still use it if necessary. Tears streaked the dust on her face. "You m… made me kill someone."

"I know. I'm so sorry," he pleaded, still lying on the ground, with Noah watching his every move, ready to tear him apart. "But… I mean, they were slavers. Rapists."

Cassie closed her eyes and took a slow breath. "So you say."

"I'm telling the truth here!" His voice broke, his face looked on the edge of panic. Chef was inclined to believe him. "I ran all the way here, please, you've got to believe me."

"Well," Chef said to Cassie, "I mean, there's very little reason for him to stage all this just so he can steal our stuff, right?"

Cassie lowered the rifle. "I s'pose."

His hands still up, the boy said, "That's… that's right. Look, all I ask is that you don't shoot me. I'll… I'll leave if you want me to but… just don't kill me."

From the corner of his eye, Chef noticed Procene's tattered red robe as she came to stand in the doorway, leaning on the jamb and holding her severed wrist.

"He doesn't look all that dangerous," Squires said. Larisa shrugged to show she agreed.

Cassie finally made a decision and slung the rifle over her shoulder. "If we run you out, you'll just starve, and that'll just be a reason for you to come back and steal things. Better we keep you here so we can keep an eye on you. You can stay here if you like, but you'll need to pull your weight."

Undiluted gratitude came over the boy's face. "Of… of course! I'll do whatever you need. I'm was a farm boy in my old life. Well, I farmed in the refugee camp. If, if you've got seeds, I can…"

Cassie looked at flower child. "Larisa?"

She nodded to show there were still seeds left.

"Gr- great! I'll… you won't regret this, I promise."

"You uh," Squires asked, "wouldn't happen to know anything about mining or quarrying, would you?"

"N-no, sorry. Is… is that a problem?"

He shrugged. "Nah, might've been helpful, is all."

"I'm Cass. But you can call me Cassie once we know each other better."

"I'm Terry, but everyone calls me Squires. This quiet lady here is Larisa. Or just Risa for short."

Flower child briefly raised a hand, then walked off.

"You can call me Chef. My actual name's Carl Johnson, but everyone just says Chef. As you can probably tell from my name, I'm the one who makes the food 'round here. When we uh, have some."

"I'll… I'll help with that. I swear, I'm good at plant work. I mean," he smiled broadly, "farming'll always be the most reliable food source, right?"

"We already have someone who's good at that," Cassie said curtly. "But I s'pose two is better than one."

"Hi. I'm Procene. Procene Sartherian." The girl's complexion had improved and the dark rings around her eyes were slowly giving way. She still stood on unstable legs. "I'd shake your hand, but…"

"Oh. Uh. Yeah. What happened?"

"I'll explain some time." Despite the sweat beading on her forehead, she gave him a disarming smile, which lit up her pretty face. "I'm new here too." She turned to the others. "How can I help?" her voice was soft and gentle.

"Help?" Chef blurted out. "You can barely stand. You should rest, get better. I mean, you lost your hand just yesterday."

She said, "It's not that bad. I mean, it is, but I don't want to be dead weight."

"What are you good at?" Squires asked her. "We don't know much about you, so..."

"Right, sorry." Another gentle smile. "I'm from a tunnelworld, and I don't know if you're familiar with those, but if you spend ninety-nine percent of your life underground, you need to think of all sorts of creative ways to make do with limited resources. My job was to think of even more ways to be creative with limited resources. Recycle machines, improve efficiency, and invent new things."

"So what, you're a tinkerer?" Cassie asked.

"No. Well, my title was Illuminator, but I s'pose surfacers would call it an inventor?"

They could use one of those. Definitely. Chef immediately said, "Hey, that's great! I mean, we've got all sorts of tech we can use from our cryosleepers, but no idea how to use it. I mean, there's a few basic things we can do, but the high-tech stuff, I don't think anyone has an inkling."

Cassie showed her enthusiasm less, but Chef presumed to know her well enough by now to be sure that she, too, welcomed someone with science-y knowledge. "Alright, well, what would you need to um, invent things?"

"Just basic stuff," she said. "uh, a worktable, some space. A light. And materials to work with, of course."

"Hey but Chef," Squires asked, "Didn't you have that survival booklet? It contained diagrams and things, didn't it?" he was right, it did. "They were too tricky for us to decipher, but maybe…?"

The girl smiled again, narrowing her almond-shaped brown eyes. "I'd love to take a look at them, if I may?"

"Wait, before you go," Cassie stopped them. "The guy we shot. He was holding a revolver. Any of you good at shooting?"

The young boy only muttered, "Uh… a bit?"

"I spent some time hunting insects underground," Procene said. "I only have one hand left, but it's my good one, thankfully. I could… always carry a firearm for the colony's defence? I mean, if you trust me? It'd be perfectly understandable if you didn't."

Nobody had any doubts left at this point, so Cassie just told her, "Alright, it's yours. I'll go fetch it. In fact, it's best that you come with?"

"Oh?"

"I uh… don't want to hurt your feelings," Cassie said, "… but you smell _terrible_. Maybe that slaver guy's clothes are still usable. We really need to get you out of that torn and soiled frock."

The girl looked at her robe, holding the folds between thumbs and forefingers. After a few whiffs, she immediately agreed. "Oh my, that's… something else."

"It's uh… quite spectacular, yes," Squires agreed with a faint smirk. "You could probably knock a buzzard off a manure truck."

"Say no more. Miss Cassie, can you show me the way?"

Cassie chuckled, actually looking somewhat charmed by this gentle, soft-spoken girl. "It's just Cassie. Come on, let's go find that body."

"Chef," Squires said, "You've been on break long enough. Let's get back to building." He checked and realized something. " _After_ I dethrone both of you with my horseshoe throw. Larisa! Come see this!"

They also invited Odile to join, because why not give the kid some time to pull himself back together. He was a bit reluctant at first, but he finally picked up his bent metal pieces and showed them all how spectacularly bad a person could be at throwing horseshoes.

* * *

"Hey um, Cassie?"

"Yeah?"

"I just want to say, again, thanks for saving me. And for trusting me after what I did. It must've been a hard decision to make."

She shrugged as they walked, the tall grass caressing their legs. "It's alright. Just because we're cut off from civilization doesn't mean we should cut our civilization out of us as well."

"That's true. Thanks for letting me stay, too. It's a relief to see that you're decent people."

"Again, that's fine. We were getting lonely, just the three of us, anyway."

Procene looked up at the sky as she walked, holding the stump of her forearm. "I know what you mean. Tunnelworlds are lonely places to live too. Sometimes, you spend days in a narrow shaft with just the same three or four people, trying to discover a stratum of ore or compacted machinery. Just a few light bulbs to see where you're going." She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. "Just being in this pure air, under the open sky, is heaven for me."

"M-hm. I get that when I'm on the open sea too. There's actually a beach not too far from here. I sometimes take a few minutes to just stand there and look at the waves during my hunts and patrols."

"You have a special bond with the sea?" the girl's brown eyes came to rest on her.

"You can say that, yes. I was a sailor for most of my adult life… well, not that I've been an adult for that long, but you know what I mean."

She nodded. "Mm."

Cassie saw a motionless body lying in the tall grass. "Oh, here we are." As they came closer, though, it seemed the clothes on this slaver's back might not be all that reusable. The fur jacket he wore was bloodied, with a ragged hole in the back from where the bullet had exited.

"I… suppose I can walk around in a bloody jacket for a while," Procene said, her nose wrinkled. "Trousers seem pretty much whole though."

"Yeah, we can probably use them until – " but then she saw that this wouldn't be the case. "Nevermind. He shat 'em when he died. Dammit."

"Ah," the other girl merely said. "That's… unfortunate."

Cassie bent over and began swiping the grass aside. "Although, with any luck, we can still find the – aha!" she stuck her hand between the glass blades and retrieved the revolver, a heavy, old-world type. They reloaded painfully slowly, but some of them, like this one, were less revolvers than they were hand cannons. A shot from one of those would probably fell… whatever it was on this planet that was large and thick-skinned.

She held it out to the other girl, grip-first. Her slender fingers took it, delicately but with confidence. "I should probably design a one-handed reloading mechanism for this thing first," she chuckled.

Cassie had started removing the fur jacket from the slain gunman, pulling it off his muscled shoulders. She tried not to look at the head, its top blown off with globs of tissue hanging from the red, open brain pan. The jacket gave way and she heard the dead body collapse back to the ground.

"Here you go," she tossed the jacket at Procene. Without a hand to catch it, the girl let it flop against her chest and to the ground, stooping to pick it up, and then shrugging it on, over her robe. The left side was red with blood, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"Maybe you can wash in the lake where we rinsed ourselves off, it's hundred metres from here. I'll make sure no creeps spy on you."

The jacket was long enough to cover her chest and half her thighs, so she'd be fine without her robe for a bit. It really needed to be washed and left to dry. They walked to the lake and Cassie sat down, her back to the pond, watching the colony, in the distance, as Procene stripped to her underwear and washed the stink off her.

When she heard water splash and the rustling of fabric, Cassie turned around again. "Done?"

"M-hm." It was a strange sight, a narrow-built young lady with two long pigtails down her back, with an oversized rough, bloody and shaggy fur jacket on, contrasting with her slender bronze thighs. "I think all the essentials are covered." She contorted her body to look at her own backside to make sure nothing was visible.

"Just about. Hey, I was wondering?"

She stood wringing out her pigtails. "M-hm?"

"How is your skin like mine, even slightly darker if you've lived in a tunnelworld all your life? I mean, mine's tan, because, well, I've spent time in the sun, but yours is almost caramel. That's weird for someone who lived underground."

With a smile – she did that a lot, it would seem – she said, "Our living spaces had ultraviolet fungi to provide light. So when we were in our home tunnels, we got what amounts to underground sunlight. Everything looked different shades of purple without artificial lights, but we were used to it. Up here it's… so much colours." She looked around, as if every minute she came to the same wondrous realization over and over again.

"I see. Let's head on back, you must be starving."

"Somewhat."

* * *

This Odile lad didn't seem like an idiot, at least, Larisa concluded as she made him talk about his former life on the farm. Seemed he was pretty well-versed in sowing, maintaining, and harvesting food crops mostly, which was welcome, since Larisa's expertise was mostly centred around more… delicate flora. Having someone there who knew exactly what to do with the vegetable and grain seeds she had was a relief. Thankfully, she'd done very well up 'til now, as could be testified by the bright green stalks sprouting from the ground where she'd sown only a few days before. If the seed packets were to be believed, the crops would be fully grown in 'turbo time' of a few weeks. It literally said that on the packet. 'Turbo time'.

He seemed physically rather frail, but then so was she, and they had Cassie to protect them, after all. Especially Cassie's rifle. She hated firearms, but had to admit to herself it had been a damn good thing that they'd had one. Chef and Squires could probably put up a decent fight too, and now that this Procene chick was capable of walking (or rather wobbling) they had one more gun for defence. If she didn't shoot them in the back the second the crops were ready, that was. Larisa didn't quite trust her. The blows she'd had to take probably didn't help with that.

She looked over at Chef and Squires, finishing up the outer structure of the refectory, and realized she was incredibly glad that the blond builder had come across them. Without him, they'd probably still be sleeping under the open sky, or in some rickety shack cobbled together by Chef's two left hands. Was that the only reason she was so glad he was here, though? She sighed and dismissed the thought.

Odile was asking something, and she hadn't been paying attention. She turned her head and tapped her ear with her finger.

"I said, are there any more seeds."

Oh. Yes, there were. She took him along to her crashed longsleeper and showed him the packets.

"Wow, you've got just about everything here." He rifled through the packets. "Rice, corn, cotton, damn, even healroot, nice."

He knew how to sow that? She didn't have a clue and the pack provided no instructions either. She felt her eyes grow wider as she pointed at the packet with a questioning face.

"Oh, yeah, I know how it's done. Come on, we'll do it together." They walked out to the field and he explained, "Gotta be careful when you sow healroot. The seeds only sprout in extremely humid environments. In the wild, healroot only takes root when the seed lies in water, like in a puddle or something. The seeds in these packets have special biodegradable film around it. You're supposed to fill that with water, so the seeds are in a sort of water bubble. Look." The packet also came with a tiny syringe, and Odile drew some water into it from a nearby puddle. Then he carefully set the needle against the seed and injected a tiny bit of fluid so the film around it inflated with water, creating a sort of teeny tiny water balloon, about a grape seed in size. "Then all you need to do is bury the seeds. The film degrades at just the right pace so the seed can sprout roots in the water, then cling to the surrounding soil when the film begins to leak. If it didn't have that, we'd have to soak the seeds in water for two days and then bury them. This is much quicker, especially since the roots are so fragile that they need to be left undisturbed once they sprout. They're really hard to handle without breaking them at that point."

The guy clearly knew his stuff. Better than she did. It was hopeful, but also a bit threatening.

He passed her the first water bubble and began to fill another. "Now all we do is bury the seeds two centimetres deep and twenty centimetres apart."

Larisa secretly hoped he wasn't good with animals or her presence would be much less indispensable in this colony.

"Hey um," the kid asked, "I just want you to know… I'm really looking forward to being part of this colony. Be nice to actually stay in one place and sow seeds for myself instead of the whole refugee camp. And we can teach each other all sorts of stuff. I'm also okay with you not saying much… I'll make enough ruckus for the both of us."

It sounded like something some hotshot with spikey blond hair would say, but it somehow felt very disarming coming from this rather awkward but clearly knowledgeable boy. She quickly wrote,

 _no need for ruckus_

 _I enjoy the silence_

 _and calm, quiet conversation_

He read it and smiled, "Ah, right. Gotcha."

She held up a packet of corn seeds at him and pointed to a nearby fertile patch of land, then to herself.

"Oh, sure," he said. "Go ahead, I'll do this. Want to take a break together in, uh, say an hour?"

She gave him a short and contained smile and went to sow the corn. As she did, she saw Squires and Chef working on the new structure. Things were proceeding at an impressive pace. Squires really knew how to put his back into things. Chef was doing his damnedest to keep up, but he clearly wasn't cut out for this kind of thing. Hopefully he could do more than just grill some meat, because so far he'd been mostly tagging along without really being all that useful.

After an hour, Odile came to get her for a drink of water and a sit-down, which she enjoyed to some extent, but much more when Squires and Chef came to join them. Cassie had gone off with her rifle, and the new girl, Prowhatsherface, sat mashing some of the leftover healroot, probably to make some kind of soothing balm for her stump. She better start making herself useful soon. Her supposed skills didn't impress Larisa much so far.

The rest of the day was spent sowing the corn. Odile came to help when his packet of seeds was empty, and together, they prepared an impressive swathe of field. When these matured, they'd have corn for a long while – which wouldn't be an excuse for Chef to serve porridge day in, day out, she promised to herself.

As dusk fell, Cassie came back with Noah, hauling the body of what looked like some kind of llama or alpaca, it wasn't entirely clear. There'd be meat on the menu again, whether she liked it or not. It was food, at least.

She watched as Chef and Squires hauled the stove and butcher's table into the newly completed kitchen, and after half an hour, smoke began to rise from the steel chimney Squires had fitted into the wall. Larisa wasn't sure about the safety of cooking in a wooden shelter, but it'd have to do for now. As they finished putting the last corn seeds in the ground, the mouth-watering smell of grilled meat came lazily rolling downwind.

Dinner was quite delicious, and she found the companionship somewhat enjoyable, even though six people was a bit much for her delicate senses. She made sure to sit next to Squires, so she could enjoy his stories about the building projects he'd been involved in back home, and all the crazy capers he'd had to pull to get things finished in time.

Without much means to join the conversation herself, she settled on making a long and careful analysis of her fellow colonists.

Squires was, without question, a godsend. He was a master builder, and she couldn't help but notice his athletic build. Not a muscleman by any means, but he looked toned and in prime physical shape.

Cassie was Cassie. Even though Larisa had told herself not to like the girl, she did in spite of herself. When it had been just the three of us, Cassie had been the one bringing and keeping the high spirits in the group, and now, too, she was outgoing, friendly and social. Pretty, too, which made Risa secretly a bit envious, but not too much, because looking average also meant getting less attention, and nothing tired her out so quickly as constant attention.

She wasn't sure about Chef. Even though he was full of good will, he hadn't impressed her so far. Not yet. Though she had to admit, she probably couldn't make such a well-grilled piece of llama-like meat in berry sauce even if she had a year to try.

Then there were the two newbies. Odile actually seemed alright, despite his rather inglorious introduction earlier today. He'd been kind and calm during the day once he'd gotten over his initial panic. There was something androgynous, about him, even feminine at times, but she didn't mind, quite the contrary. They didn't need a colony full of men that acted like silverbacks beating their chests.

This Procene girl, though… she might be as good-looking as Cassie, maybe even more so, but she somehow felt that her gentle and quiet demeanour hid something more sinister. She was a bit too well-spoken, she knew a bit too well what to say at all times. The guys obviously took a liking to her, but especially Cassie seemed to get along with her very well. She had this appearance around her, a kind of angelic gentility that more often than not served as a front for a vicious snake in the grass.

Squires' arm lightly coming to rest over her shoulder as the evening turned colder, however, made her realize she didn't have to give the pigtailed stump-arm too much thought.


	7. Untold Stories

**.**

* * *

 **Untold Stories**

* * *

There was hot milk today, that much of Chef's hopes had already come true. He stood leaning over his old makeshift stove, watching the milk slowly heat up. Larisa had milked the muffalo, frowning all the way, and had gone back to sleep. Everyone else was still in 'bed', but he didn't mind. Even if it was just boiling muffalo milk, at least he was cooking. He looked back at the fields and saw that the bright green stalks Larisa had sown the first day had grown even more. It wouldn't be long until they could harvest. Good, because the nutritional paste wouldn't last for more than a day or two, and a meat-only diet was anything but healthy. Perhaps Larisa or Cassie could go out and gather some roots or wild vegetables today. Although, while Cassie was an absolute rock, he didn't trust her judgment when it came to edible plants. This Odile character seemed to know a lot about edible flora at least. Maybe if Chef took him along, they could make informed guesses as to which plants were edible on this planet. Just because it looked like something they'd known back on Terra, didn't mean it was equally safe to eat.

Squires came to join him a bit later, hugging himself against the early morning chill. "Mornin'."

"Good morning."

"Last time you'll be boiling milk outside, huh? Today I'm finishing your kitchen, and maybe the refectory too. You can help if you want, but I'm thinking I can do most of it on my own."

"If you need a hand, sure. But if I can, I'd like to go gathering. Take one of our plant people with me. We can't eat just meat forever, and it'll be a while 'til the harvest is ready."

Squires nodded, looking out at the horizon. "Good thinking. I wouldn't mind a nice complete meal." He sighed. "Braised venison. Al dente young green peas in the pod. Salted, grilled jacket potatoes with garlic butter."

Chef's stomach growled furiously. "Knock it off, you're just making it worse."

"I know. The futility of wishing."

"Mental masturbation," Cassie's voice came from behind them. She came to stand at the stove and explained, "It feels good for a short moment, but it doesn't really achieve anything." Noah trotted beside her, munching on some of the meat leftovers.

Others also joined them, one at a time, until everyone but sleepyhead Larisa was assembled at the stove, drinking warm milk, most with their eyes closed in enjoyment.

"Hey Odile?" Chef asked after everyone had savoured the initial milky bliss, sitting in a circle, each of them on a big rock of his or her own.

"Mm?"

"Want to join me in gathering some wild plants today? Stuff that looks edible. I think, between us, we can make a pretty safe guess as to what we can throw in a cooking pot."

"Oh. Sure, yeah, I think Larisa can carry on without me today. It only takes a little explanation to turn a fine gardener into a fine farmer."

"Alright, when you're ready?"

"Let me just finish my milk and we're off."

Cassie nodded and said, "I'll see if I can score us some fresh meat too. Imagine, we might be able to have a balanced meal this evening."

"And we'll be having it in a finished refectory," Squires promised. "I'm finishing construction tonight," he pointed his fingers at his friends and said, in a smooth used car salesman voice, "and you can take _that_ to the bank."

"Can I help anyone with anything?" the new girl with the missing hand asked. "I mean, if I can be useful…?"

"Mm," Cassie said. "Best if you stick around for now. The bigger our little campsite gets, the more it'll be noticed. We might get wild animals coming in, hoping for an easy meal, or raiders. We now know there's others living out there, and they don't mean well. Having someone with a gun here at all times is probably wisest at this point."

Larisa also came to sit by them. The girl really was a lazy sleeper.

"Alright, if that's what you prefer. I'll take a look at those schematics then, in the survival book. See what I can come up with."

"Think they'll be useful?" Squires asked. There was a good chance some of it would help with construction, so it was natural for him to be the most interested.

The girl smiled, her sleepy eyes gentle as always. It was hard to believe this as the same person that had given Larisa a whooping. It remained to be seen if she was trustworthy. "I took a quick look yesterday, and there's lots and lots of things to learn," she said. "Too much to take in at once, but I think I saw blueprints for some kind of power generators, a metal smelter, even a brewing installation. And those were just the simple things. There's a wealth of information there, it's just a matter of deciphering it all. Some of the stuff at the end is so complex I don't even know what it's for. Advanced alloys, uranium enrichment, superconductor technology… crazy stuff."

"Power generator… you mean, electrical power?" Cassie asked, her eyes wide.

"M-hm. And it seems that when we can build generators, we could also build coolers or heaters. I need to be careful, I don't want to promise things that I might not be able to deliver, but there's a chance we could have decent heating if the winter comes, not just campfires. And a way to keep our food cold." She looked at the others and gave a contented sigh. "I think losing my hand was a small price to pay for being able to be a part of this little community. Thanks again for all your kindness. Words can't express."

"That's fine," Chef said. "Seems you'll be able to give back as well. I don't think any one of us had ever dared to hope we might even be able to dream of electrical power."

"I'll do everything I can to make up for my previous stupidity."

"Pft," Cassie blew. "It's long forgotten."

Chef could see in the eyes of the others that she was only speaking for herself. Larisa especially looked mistrustful. And if he was honest with himself, Chef wasn't entirely convinced either. Her gentle kindness could be an act for all they knew. Then again, why would she? Right now there was no way to tell. There was no point going over and over it in his head, time would tell.

"I can tell that's not the case for everyone," the girl said in her soft, amiable voice. "And that's alright. You shouldn't just accept me, I'm fine with having to work to earn your trust." She always seemed to know what to say. Perhaps she was simply a naturally sociable and kind-hearted person, but there was something off about it. Or maybe Chef was just imagining things.

He felt a piece of paper being pushed in his hand, out of sight of the others. When he looked next to him, he saw Larisa quickly meeting his gaze, then averting her eyes again.

"Well," Squires announced, slapping the dust off the seat of his pants. "Off to work I go. Miss Procene here isn't the only one who has to earn your trust. I swear on the blood of my ancestors, by day's end, a refectory shall stand on this battlefield."

"Godspeed, young lion," Cassie said, and without any embarrassment, she tilted her butt to one side and let out a modest _pweep_ of wind as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Then she drained her milk and rose. "Come on, Noah. Time to score us some meat." With a click of her tongue, the dog fell in line beside her and they walked off.

"I'm ready too," Odile told Chef, scooping the last droplets of milk out of his tin with his finger.

"Just a sec. I uh, need to take care of some nature business," he said, and got up, the paper hidden in his fist. He walked towards a nearby tree, uncrumpled the note, and read.

 _I can tell you're thinking the same thing_

 _creepy isn't it_

 _always knows what to say_

 _not okay with giving her a gun_

 _something's off about her_

 _too pretty_

 _too friendly_

 _too agreeable_

 _too acquiescent_

Chef couldn't say he disagreed. When he walked back, Larisa stood waiting for him halfway, her eyes probing.

"I don't know," he told her quietly. "I'm also not a hundred percent comfortable with her just yet, but there's no real indication that she's dishonest apart from our hunches."

She snorted impatiently and scratched a few words on paper.

 _two kinds of people who always know exactly what to say_

 _silver tongues_

 _and psychopaths_

 _which one is she?_

It was a fair question, and one he also asked himself. "I don't know. No way to tell yet. We'll have to keep a close eye on her."

More scrawling.

 _Cass is definitely falling for it_

 _Thought she was supposed to be sceptical of people_

 _I don't like this_

"Neither do I," Chef said. "But all we have right now is a nagging feeling. We might be completely wrong. I mean, for the same price, we're being all suspicious and leery for no reason. Until we know more, all we can do is watch her closely. And if she wants to kill us, well… Cassie'll be gone for the day, so we'll know right away."

Larisa's face looked unconvinced, but she did nod, her face intense. She looked back at the one-handed girl, her eyes narrowing, then abruptly turned and walked back to the others.

Chef decided not to waste more energy on pointless speculation and mistrust, and joined Odile to begin the search for food.

* * *

God damnit. This was the second one already. Cassie had hoped the animals on this planet would bolt less quickly as they weren't used to humans and their myriad imaginative ways of ending lives, but no luck. First some hooved quadruped had given her the slip, and now a hare-like creature had evaded her long enough to reach its lair. It'd be idle hope to think Noah would turn out to be a rabbit-hunting dog all along. And indeed, the pooch gave no indication of sticking its head in the rodent's lair.

Dubiously glad that at least no one was around to bear witness to her embarrassing failure, Cass once again set out to shoot some animal, any animal. Really, anything that had meat on it would do. Even a rat would be sufficient. It was late afternoon already and she still hadn't shot anything apart from her own self-esteem.

As she wandered the grassy plains, her mind did the same. She had a good feeling about the new arrivals. Squires had more than proven he was harmless, and this Odile guy seemed like he couldn't hurt a fly, except maybe by petting it too hard. Procene, too, seemed like a useful addition to the group. She seemed like the kind of person you couldn't help but like, and Cass thought that given time, maybe she'd turn out to be someone the rest of the group looked up to. A leader-figure. They needed one, to be honest. She fancied herself good with people, and possessing some skills that made her a valuable addition to any survivors' community, but she wasn't a leader. She could keep a small group together, but as soon as someone better presented him- or herself, they were welcome to the job. And this Procene-girl might well be that person. She'd have to settle in, gain the others' trust for a while, but Cass recognized charisma when she saw it.

And she also recognized a god damn free lunch when she saw one. Oh man, this must be her lucky day. A big, fat, feathered gobbler waddled between two bushes, only fifty or so metres away.

"Noah," she announced quietly, "It might not be thanksgiving, but Chef's going to have a turkey to stuff tonight." She raised her rifle, lined up the iron sights, and without much effort, shot the ugly fat bird stone dead. "Haha," she whooped, skipping over to the dead animal, her prize for the day. This would be a meal long remembered. She scooped it up by the legs and held it aloft, making sure it was dead and not needlessly suffering. Satisfied that the ugly thing's candle was well and truly snuffed, she tied its legs together and slung it over her shoulder. "Noah, sweetie, our group is going to love us even more than they already do!"

The dog bounced and barked happily.

A wide smile on her face, Cassie began the hike back, but as she did, she noticed something in the sky. A long, gray stripe of smoke, making an arc against the clouds. Noah yapped nervously as a sound, distant at first, came closer and swelled to a massive roar. The fiery object rocketed down at an incredible speed, whooshing over her head and disappearing behind the nearby trees as the sound became so deafening it hurt her ears. The next moment, the ground gave a single shake and the noise stopped with a hard, hollow _thud_.

For a moment, Cassie and Noah looked at each other stupidly, and then Cassie realized that whatever it was, she'd have to go check.

She ran towards the rising plume of smoke, a few hundred metres away, rushing through the trees and emerging into a clearing where the object lay, smack in the middle.

It was instantly recognizable. A steel sarcophagus, warped and bent from the heat, its red-hot glow slowly fading. It was another longsleeper. And that meant someone was inside it. Maybe someone dangerous, maybe not, but most likely someone who needed help. She didn't know much about longsleeper crashes, but this one clearly hadn't hit the ground as gracefully as theirs had. Whoever was in there, if they survived at all, would be seriously injured.

Her legs propelled her forward, and she reached the sarcophagus, slamming her hand down on the release-button. The residual heat stabbed into her hand, but that didn't matter now. With a stifled hissing sound, the door slid upward, opening partly but getting stuck at the halfway point. A head of blonde hair and two pale arms spilled out, red streaks of blood coating them.

"Hey!" Cassie called. "Hey, are you alright?" She didn't even realize how stupid her question was, and it didn't matter.

A bloodied face turned to her, hanging upside-down, and two bright blue eyes opened, rolling in their sockets before settling on her. "H… help."

"It's alright," Cass rapped. "I'm going to get you out. Just stay calm, we'll get you out of there." She was stuck halfway, the longsleeper door clamping down on her lower ribcage.

"I… hurt. Pain. So much. Legs. Can't feel."

"I know," Cass breathed, "you crashed insanely hard. Sit tight, I'll get you out."

"Bleeding. Leaking."

"Easy, easy."

There was nothing she could do apart from grabbing the young, naked, bloodied girl under her shoulders and pulling. As soon as she did, the longsleeper's occupant let out a shriek, the arms clawing wildly at her saviour. Startled, Cass let go and the young woman's body flopped back down against the warm steel exterior of the longsleeper, dangling with its head downwards.

"I can't, I can't feel, I can't feel my legs," the girl bleated, the blood on her face mixing with panicked tears. "I can't feel my legs oh God oh God."

"It's alright, you're probably just numb from the crash," Cass tried to reassure her before grabbing her under the arms again. "I'm going to pull you out. I have to, there's no other way. It's gonna hurt, but you need to get out of that sarcophagus."

"N-no! Please! It hurts! Just get me – "

Cass had no other choice. She hooked her fingers around the girl's arms again and pulled as hard as she could. There was a wet ripping sound as the skin on the occupant's shoulder got caught on a sharp, hooked piece of metal, but Cass didn't even notice it, nor the shrieks of pain from her thrashing victim. Clenching her teeth and closing her eyes, she pulled as hard as she could, and suddenly the hatch opened its maw and the body came free, letting loose so abruptly that Cass staggered backward and fell on her behind, still holding the other person. Her eyes snapped open but they couldn't comprehend what they were seeing right away. The pale skin of the girl in her arms just stopped at her lower back… and there was nothing beyond that.

She was only holding half a person.

She scrambled backwards, reflexively, but then she saw the girl's hand moving. As if someone else was in control of her body, she turned the bisected body on its back and looked into a living face, eyes wide with pain and panic. "I th… I think my back's broken," the girl managed to utter, her voice no more than a breath.

Cass' eyes unwillingly looked down at the victim's body. It had been wrenched in two below the waist, the skin below her navel torn off, blackened from where the superheated steel, twisting in the crash, had crushed her body in two. Her insides bulged out of her abdominal cavity into the grass. Vomit pushed itself upwards, a sour, rancid fist trying to break through into her mouth.

"I can't… I can't…" the girl whispered, her face slowly turning blue as her eyes tried to focus but failed.

There was nothing Cass could do. Nothing at all. She just held the dying girl's hand, fighting back tears, and said, "It's okay. You're not alone. It's okay. You're not alone." Over and over again.

The skin between her fingers grew cold, the grip weaker.

"It's okay. You're not alone."

"E… E… E…"

"Wh… what's that?"

The girl's movements became more laboured, her cold hand losing its little remaining strength. "E… E… Emi. M… My n… name. Emi."

Somehow, Cass wished she hadn't told her that.

"I w… was… I d… don't… deserve th… I was… going to… m… mean s… so… something…"

The girl's mouth opened and closed a few more times, and it was over.

Cass held her hand for a little longer, then wiped her tears and set about burying the girl with the blonde ponytail… or what was left of her. A few things had spilled out of her longsleeper along with her. There was a first aid pack, another welder-cutter, some synthread clothes, several nutri-paste packets, a small jewel box, and a thick envelope. Hoping she wasn't violating the girl's privacy to a horrible degree, she opened it and looked inside. Three magazines slid out, but she only needed to see one of them to realize why this girl had brought them. On the cover stood a beautiful blonde, dressed in a sensual but classy combination of short red skirt, and dark blue jacket. A black bra peeked out from between the cleavage made by the jacket, only partially covered by a loosely-tied, polka-dotted necktie. The ensemble was completed by a bunny hairpin on one side of her head, and a big red-white bow tie on the other. Tall boots enveloped long fair-skinned legs. In bold letters, the magazine cover announced,

EMI, THE ULTIMATE FASHIONISTA

SEE THE FULL SHOOT INSIDE

This had been her when she was alive. And here she was now. Bloody. Naked. Torn in half. Dead. The smooth legs on the magazine cover now crushed and broken, left behind unseen in a warped mass of red-hot steel, forever.

Cass had to sit down for a minute, Noah nuzzling the back of her hand. The girl's last words sitting like a stone in her stomach. "I was going to mean something." She could have been a part of the colony, a part of the story. What would she have been like? How would things have gone if she'd survived? She might have had so many wonderful things to give. She might have made so many great moments happen. No one would ever know. She was just a slab of meat now. Crashed into this planet only to die. What if this had been her? A footnote. A throw-away bit of nothing. No one would ever have known her, like no one would ever know this girl. If things had gone different, Cass had been lying here with her guts stinking in the dirt and maybe this girl, this Emi, this supermodel and whatever else she'd been, had been the one who'd lived and who'd meant something.

The poor thing had been right. She hadn't deserved this.

How many others had there been? Their bodies destroyed by fire, ripped apart by screaming metal, crushed between collapsing hull plates, frozen in the cold, uncaring black of space, smashed apart on the planet surface, along with their malfunctioning longsleepers. All of them nameless, their stories forever untold.

She didn't have the strength to start burying the poor thing just yet. As happy as she was to be alive, to have friends, to not be alone, she still felt the crushing grief of all the lost lives press down on her in this moment, and she let it. After a few minutes of pointless crying, she wiped her eyes, got up and began her heartbreaking task, digging a hole with a blade of twisted metal ripped off the longsleeper when it crashed. Then she dragged the girl's remains to it and let them roll in, placing the jewel box inside with her. After shovelling the earth back over her and placing the magazines on top, held down with a stone, she said a few words that no one needed to hear but the buried girl and herself.

After giving Noah a long, loving hug, she took the welder-cutter, the paste packets and the clothes this girl no longer needed, and began the walk back home, Noah dancing in circles around her as she walked. Back to the sunlight, to friendship, to love, to life.


	8. The Promise of Comfort

**The Promise of Comfort**

Cassie woke up from a short, restless sleep. What had happened again? Oh, right, she'd gotten lost on the way back, only finding the colony again after nightfall. She hoped the bird she'd shot hadn't gone bad already, but really, she was happy having found her way back, everything else didn't matter as much anymore. She hadn't dreamed of the girl in the longsleeper, but as soon as she was awake, she'd started thinking about her again. Her and the others, all the people ended in the destruction of their spaceship. In the end, their own survival had been decided by nothing more than a toss of the dice. If there were gods, they were pretty damn evil.

No, not evil. Uncaring. Utterly apathetic. At least evil gods would have given some meaning to the ended lives. This was just… random. Utterly wasteful. She decided to try and turn the utterly pointless and needless death she'd witnessed yesterday into a good thing. Or at least try and make some good come of it. She already cared about her fellow settlers, but she'd do so even more. Enjoy every minute of them together and every minute of being alone with her own thoughts and Noah's nuzzles.

She owed all the people who'd perished on the ship that much.

Procene had still been up, looking out for her arrival, the others either having turned in already or simply fallen over asleep at the campfire. She couldn't blame them, people were dead tired. But right now a pleasant small seemed to waft towards her in the barrack. The smell of grilled poultry.

Oh, no. No _god damn way_ they were eating that bird and not saving her a piece. She threw on her synthread shirt and pants (her undies probably smelled like a nuclear disaster by now) and marched out. Before she could shout at the colonists to halt their nefarious deeds, Chef had already noticed her and held up a dripping drumstick.

"Cassie!" he called to her. "I made sure to save you a succulent buttock!"

Oh Hell yes. She was going to make that drumstick taste like the very first and last thing she'd ever eat. "Oh thanks, Chef. I was worried you might've eaten my catch without me."

"You wound us," Squires laughed, his mouth full of meat. "We'd never enjoy your spoils without saving you some."

Cass eagerly accepted the drumstick and tore a chunk off. "Oh man, this is delicious." It was. The meat was perfectly grilled, still moist enough that juice trickled down her throat. Hunger was the best sauce, true, but even disregarding that, this was some damn fine dining. "This is great, Chef," she said through a mouthful. "You made my day and it hasn't even started yet."

"Hey," he said, "you're the one who brought us the bird in the first place."

"True."

"Don't sell yourself short though," Odile told him. "I don't think any of us could've seasoned it so well. I mean, identifying plants is one thing, being able to use them right is another."

He smiled broadly. "And Squires got us a kitchen, and Larisa grew the thyme I used. Let's just say it was a collective effort from all of us, directly or indirectly."

"Cheers to that," Squires grinned, raising his water in a toast.

"Speaking of a collective effort," Procene said in her soft voice, "I may have some interesting things to share."

Everyone ate in silence and watched her.

"I've been browsing the survival booklet, and I think I might have a decent handle on some of the schematics. They're not laid out the way I'm used to, but I think I've got the hang of it."

"Cool," Squires said, smacking his lips as he helped himself to another piece of breast meat. "So what'd you find out?"

"Well," she said, "I think that the electronic components that are integrated in our longsleepers are actually more than just specialized, single-use pieces of technology. They're programmable to do all sorts of things. Makes sense, right, since they need to do all sorts of things, like recycle air, cool the pod, heat it, generate power, calculate the navigational charts and so on, and yet they all look the same."

"Oh yeah," Cass said. She'd heard rumours about those. "We supposedly had some on the ship. There were these tech guys that were specialized in something we weren't told anything about, but scuttlebutt was that they were testing a new sort of universal technology which could basically adapt to the programming it was given. That was probably what they used for the longsleepers and the entire ship."

"Imagine how much you could streamline production of electronics if you could just crank out loads of those things and program them however you liked," Squires mused. "Makes sense that they'd bank on that technology."

"Right," Procene said. "And I think that's what we're dealing with here. Which is actually… great news." She sounded like she was afraid of jinxing it by calling it that. "We might be able to use those components for all sorts of things. I need to be careful here, but we might have potential for all kinds of modern technology at our fingertips."

"Whoa," Chef breathed. "I don't, I don't even…" he sighed. "So in simple terms, for a cook from a backwards hellhole of a country like me, does that mean we can actually use electricity and stuff?"

"It might," Procene answered. "And even more than that. I think I already know which components to use for cooling, heating and power generating functions."

"Wait," Cass asked. "You're saying you can actually program them?"

She shook her head, her pigtails bouncing. "No, not yet. But I know whereabouts which components are in the longsleepers. I can't actually program them yet, but I _can_ identify them and re-use them as they were intended."

Cass noticed Larisa scowling and wondered what that was about. Her eyes were venom.

"If someone," she went on, looking at Squires, "could construct usable shells around them, we could actually build all kinds of machines. _In theory_."

Squires held up his hands. "Whoa, hold on a sec. I'm a builder, not a mechanic. I build structures. Buildings. I don't think this is quite the same."

"It's not," she agreed gently, "but the booklet provides schematics for those as well. We can reuse the steel and composites in the longsleepers, it doesn't have to be pretty, just functional."

"Imagine," Cass heard herself say, "us in a month, watching television together while we whip up some iced margaritas and microwave some yakitori."

Procene chuckled gently. "I wouldn't get wild dreams just yet. Like I said, this is all guesswork on my part. Until we get something built, there's no telling if it actually works."

Squires cracked his knuckles. "Let's get to it then. Explain what I need to do and I'll uh, get it together."

She made an embarrassed, cautious face. "Before we do that, though…"

"Yees?"

"I'd work much more efficiently with a table and a chair. Would you, perhaps…?"

He nodded and rose, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Say no more, one table and chair coming right up."

Cass did have one more question. "Before you start, though… since we only have three longsleepers left, that means our supply of these uh…"

"Components?"

"Mm… is limited, right?"

"I… would expect so," Procene answered. "But since our longsleepers made their way to the planet, other parts of the ship might have done the same, and in that case, it's just a matter of finding them."

Squires snorted. "You say that like it's easy. A planet is _big_."

"So is an intergalactic spaceship," Procene reminded him. "I remember when we boarded, there was so much of the ship that we couldn't even see the sky."

"I uh… may know the location of another crashed piece," Cass said carefully. She didn't want to think about it too much, especially the fact that there was probably still a lower half of a human inside it, but they'd need everything they could get. "A… longsleeper came down not too far from here. You may have seen it or heard it passing overhead?"

"Oh," Chef said. "So that's what it was."

Odile immediately asked, "The occupant?"

"Dead on arrival." She shuddered at the memory. "But the longsleeper could still be stripped for parts. She… doesn't need it anymore."

"It's… sad," Procene agreed, "but we have to be practical. The more of these components we have, the better our chances of survival." Her gentle eyes narrowed as she smiled, "and our chances of one day having a television."

Larisa abruptly stood up, patted the dust off her bum and walked off. Cass didn't know what that was about, but perhaps she was simply frustrated that everyone was talking while she couldn't. Whatever the case, Procene's findings were promising.

"Alright," Squires said, his face also surprised at Larisa's sudden departure. "I'll make sure you get some basic necessities, Procene."

"Thank you."

"But first I'm going to see why Larisa stormed off just now."

Chef answered in Larisa's stead. "Some of us aren't that quick to welcome every change without some degree of caution."

Procene hugged her knees, her bandaged stump still red. "I understand. I didn't exactly make it easy for you guys to trust me."

"No," Chef said, rising and tossing away the bone of his turkey leg. "You didn't." He walked off.

Cass didn't see the problem, personally. Sure, the girl had made a horrible first impression, but if she'd wanted to pull funny business, she'd have done so already. After all, if Cass was out, she was the only one with a gun.

Odile seemed to agree. "I'm not sure what you'd have to gain by pulling the wool over our eyes. She's being paranoid, really."

Cass left the others to their own devices, confident that no one would turn out to be a homicidal maniac, and went to patrol the perimeter.

* * *

"So uh, what seems to be the problem?"

Squires sat next to her, his arms crossed over his knees as Larisa toyed with one of the pieces of bent metal they'd used as horseshoes. She scratched in the sand,

 _PROCENE_

"What, you don't like her?"

She wrote

 _LIKE_

in the sand, then crossed it out and wrote

 _TRUST_

in its place.

"Really?" Squires asked. "You don't trust her?"

She shook her head. She couldn't imagine how the others could. Had they forgotten – or in Squires' case, not paid attention during the retelling – how this chick had fought them for their scraps? And didn't they realize that shooting people's hands off tended to make them resentful? Surely she and Chef weren't the only ones who realized that the woman's contrite demeanour might just be an act? Surely they weren't the only ones who noticed the woman always knew what to say, and when?

Squires sniffed slowly. "I haven't seen any reason to mistrust her, myself. After all, she's got the gun. Then again, you're right, it never hurts to be cautious. Maybe we're being a bit too grateful she's here and not careful enough that she might be dangerous."

Thank _god_ he understood.

Convinced she was doing the stupidest thing in the world, she turned her head, leaned over and kissed him.

* * *

Chef watched Larisa and Squires sit together, her head on his shoulder, and smiled. Love bloomed even after the end of the world, it would seem. After a few minutes of musing, he returned to his task, stripping the longsleepers of any and all components they still held, along with Procene, who'd come to join him, saying she couldn't just sit idly by while others worked, and she'd had enough of schematics and booklets for a few hours.

She didn't talk much, although Chef figured that had more to do with her assumption that he wouldn't be open to conversation, rather than a personal dislike. He supposed the others had been right, though. The girl did have the gun, and if she wanted to kill them for what meagre loot they had, she'd have done so already. And besides, even if she wasn't on the up-and-up, there was no reason to treat her with suspicion, better to let her think their guard was down. Plus, it'd be a bit more pleasant to work with some conversation.

"So hey," he began, not sure what to ask and just settling on, "how did you win your ticket for the ship?"

Twisting a component out of its metal shell, Procene replied, "It's… not a very interesting story. Sure you want to hear it?"

"Please."

"Our tunnelworld village got ten seats. They had a vote. They wanted to make sure our community wouldn't make a fool of itself by sending lazy or um, less educated members. They also didn't want to lose their most valuable people, obviously. So they decided that the most useful, yet also dispensable members of the community could go. That meant, everything they had more than one of. I was one of the three illuminators, and uh," she cleared her throat, "the least accomplished of the lot. Made sense too, I'm twenty-four and they were over forty. I didn't take it personally."

"Huh." Chef said. "So either you were chosen because you'd represent your community well, or…?"

She smiled. "… or because I wouldn't be missed terribly."

"No special person you left behind?"

She shook her head. "I didn't bother with any of that, I was a bit single-minded in trying to become better at what I did. Maybe that was stupid, in hindsight, but it did bring me here."

"Miss home?"

She thought for a moment. "Yes and no. If you've grown up in tunnels and caves, you need some time adapting to the open sky above you. But I try not to waste my life on regrets or hindsight. I'm here, I'm with good people trying to make the best of all this, so I should too." The component twisted out of its housing with a _pop_. "The past is simply… irrelevant?"

"Aha."

"What about you?"

He explained, "When the Unified Terran Government formed, all slavery was abolished. My owners were fined so hard they only had their shirts left, and all former slaves were given a choice, either become free men with nothing to their name but the clothes on their back, or volunteer for the ship. I didn't have to think long."

"You were a slave?" She clicked her tongue. "That must have been hard."

He gave a lopsided shrug. "It was manageable. My owners were harsh, but they weren't sadistic or anything. Most of the guards were decent people too, as far as slaver guards go, just a small minority who wanted nothing more than to hurt people for trumped-up reasons. A large minority, really," he corrected himself with a humourless grin. "I was treated rather well because of my cooking skills. The basic labourers, well… let's say they were treated only slightly better than animals."

She shook her head. "Tragic, how people can do those horrible things to each other." She picked at the component with her fingertip, keeping it cradled in the crook of her elbow. "Slavery, war, oppression… Never understood it."

"Me neither. At least here, we're free of all that." Then he recalled the two men that had chased Odile. "Well, mostly."

"Mostly." Her eyes lit up. " _Heyyyy_."

"Mm?"

"I _think_ I've found a way to access the programming on these things." She turned the business side of the component towards him. "See? There's an access slot in the back, but really, really tiny."

Chef leaned closer to look. She smelled of sweat, blood and fatigue, but also of woman. Looking at the component, he only saw unintelligible mosaics of plastic, metal, and other materials. "I'm sorry, I'm not… I have no idea what I'm looking at."

"That's alright," she smiled. "I don't either. Not yet. But I'll figure it out." Sliding the component in the pocket of her fur jacket, she said, "I need to go change my bandages, but I'll be back to help after that, will you still be here?"

"Yup."

"Alright, see you in a bit."

Occasionally sparing a glace at Larisa and Odile, tending the fields, and Squires, cutting wood to make a table and chair, Chef carried on removing components from his longsleeper, and when it took Procene a while to return, he began dismantling Cass' longsleeper as well.

It was only when evening fell that Procene returned, holding the survival booklet. "Sorry, got invested in this. I _think_ we can use the already-programmed components for their original functions. Like heating, cooling and… generating power." She turned a few pages in the booklet. "I need to go talk to Squires about this, will you be alright on your own?"

He'd have appreciated the company, but Procene's research came first, so he simply said, "Yeah, go do what you need to do."

"Sure?"

"Yeah. I'm fine, looking forward to the results of your research."

Later in the evening, Cass returned with another bird, and Odile and Larisa had found some wild cabbage-like vegetables, which seemed edible, which was Chef's cue for starting dinner.

As he cooked, Cass kept him company, offering Noah the occasional scrap of meat.

"So hey," he asked her. "You uh, entirely sure about this Procene girl?"

She shifted on her stool. "Yeah. I noticed there seems to be some suspicion coming from you and Risa. There any reason? Something I missed?"

He half-shrugged as he washed the cabbages in a water bucket. "Mmmnot really. But she's… I don't know. Something's off about her. She's too likeable? Y'know?"

"Mm. I don't think that's a ruse or anything. I usually notice these things, as you can imagine. And I don't see any indications of dishonesty. I think that's just how she is."

There probably wouldn't be any convincing her, so Chef began filleting the bird and changed the subject. "I've got gossip by the way."

"Oooh! Tell! Tell!"

He turned toward her and grinned. "Larisa? And Squires?"

"Yeeees?"

He singsonged, "Sittin' in a tree…"

Cass' eyes lit up like bonfires. " _Really_? Holy crap, that is _so_ awesome!" She rocked back and forth on her stool in excitement. "It's great to see the beautiful things in life can still happen, even here, even now."

He smiled along with her. "Sure is. At times like these, I think to myself, we're going to make it. I know it's silly, but I do."

She hopped off her stool. "We _are_ going to make it, Chef. We're doing great."

Outside, a few loud _bangs_ sounded.

Chef and Cass' eyes briefly crossed. "That was a gun. Procene's gun!"

Cass immediately rushed out, Noah disappearing out the door behind her. Chef forgot the stew and snatched up his plasteel knife, following Cass to wherever she was going.

Cass was running hell for leather towards the east side of the camp, and Chef followed as fast as he could, unable to keep up entirely but still staying close. Abruptly, Cass stopped and kneeled, aiming her rifle at two people in the darkness.

Immediately their hands went up. "Stop! Cass! Don't shoot! Don't shoot, it's us!" both voices shouted.

Cass lowered her rifle and asked, "What happened?"

It was Odile and Procene, the former half-prone, the latter standing over him. A shaggy mass lay on the ground.

"It was… this thing," Odile panted, his voice sounding pained. "It just… rushed at me. All of… a sudden. Like it… went berserk or something."

They approached and Chef saw it was some kind of large mammal. It lay panting on its side, sounding like it was dying.

"You get bit?" Cass asked quickly.

"N-no," Odile replied, checking his body. "But it was close. If Procene hadn't been there… it's… just a few scratches and bruises."

"You hurt, Procene?"

"No," she chuckled, kneeling over the fallen Odile to check on him. "My last hand remains attached for now." Larisa and Squires, too, arrived, one of them carrying a torch. "Ah, good. Shine some light?"

Squires did as she asked. "What happened?"

Procene quickly explained, checking the boy's injuries and declaring them harmless and in need of little more than a good clean and a kiss from mommy.

"I'm not… I'm not going to get rabies… am I?"

"Don't think so," she said. "This animal looked crazed, but not rabid. No foam at the mouth. Coordinated movements. Don't think it was any kind of illness, maybe a short-circuit in the brain, I don't know. At any rate, as long as there's no contact with bodily fluids, you're probably safe."

"Probably?"

"Sorry, I'm not a veterinarian or a doctor. I'm just… the person who is the least ignorant about medicine. And this planet… well, things might not work the same way. There might be diseases we don't know of."

Meanwhile, Squires slid his foot under the dead animal and rolled it over. "Never seen anything like this… any idea what it is?"

"Mmmno," Cassie said, looking more closely. "Looks like a goat, but… different. Probably this planet's version of one, I guess. Think the meat's safe to eat?"

Procene looked at the animal intently. "I think so, yes. But Chef, best you heat it well, all the way to the core, just to be sure."

"Sure," Chef replied. "Might be a bit chewy, but yeah, best be sure."

Cass kneeled down by the animal, prying its lips apart with the barrel of her rifle. "Strange. Looks like a herbivore. Why would it even attack people?"

"Like Procene said," Odile ventured. "Probably just went mad or something."

"Hmm."

"Think there might be more?" Chef asked.

"Don't think so," Cass said, scanning the horizon. "But we best stay cautious and sleep indoors, not go out during the night except for uh, hygienic breaks."

With a determined face, Larisa held up a note to Cass' eyes.

 _i want a separate bedroom_

 _terry is ok with building it_

 _assume you guys are too_

"Uh…" Cass answered "I'm not the leader or anything here. But uh, sure, if Squires is okay with it, we can get you a separate bedroom, I suppose. It's not really what we should be spending time on at this p – "

"It's alright," Squires interrupted her. I'll put in extra hours in the evening if I have to."

"… Okay then. Any objections?"

None came.

"Fine, then."

"Squires," Procene asked, "Can I speak to you for a moment? It's about these components."

Larisa's eyes briefly flashed, but she instantly hid her suspicion again. Not before Cassie noticed, however. Her eyes remained hard as Squires walked with Procene to her new research table.

It was inevitable, Cass supposed, that when the first, primary needs were satisfied, the classic human pettiness had room to sneak in again. She could only hope that this little smouldering ember couldn't become a raging fire. They had much better things to spend their energy on.


	9. Neighbourhood Welcome

**.**

* * *

 **Neighbourhood Welcome**

* * *

The morning meal was a combination of the dodgy goat meat and grilled mushrooms. Not a repast of kings, but still enough to make sure everyone started the day with plenty of energy.

With the meal done, Procene immediately went to continue her research, Odile and Larisa tended the fields like they always did, and Squires set to constructing a new building, leaving his plans of putting a separate bedroom together until the evening. Chef figured it was only natural. Lovers wanted to be together, after all, away from, well, prying eyes. It was fine by him, he preferred not to have to hear noises he wasn't supposed to.

Cass lingered by the fire for a little longer, then went on her way to find more meat. Their work was never done, it seemed. With nothing better to do, Chef helped Squires out a bit. He'd apparently decided to build in stone this time, and was hauling chunks of them towards a worktable, where he used the welder-cutter to slice them into blocks the size of a shoebox.

"I'll take care of that," Chef said, taking his place at the worktable and slicing the stones, returning for the occasional new chunk. It was a cold, black type of stone that chipped easily, but was still very workable. Slate, probably, or something like it.

Squires had found some way to make mortar, it seemed, by mixing ash with wet lime. As he came by to collect more blocks, he told Chef that I wasn't proper cement, but it would hold for a generation of two if they were lucky. Sweat stood on his brow, but he uttered nary a complaint. Chef, too, was fighting the heat as he hauled chunks and cut blocks, but seeing the building slowly take form gave him the energy he needed to keep going. Stone was much more durable than wood, after all, and the first stone building would be a turning point. No more sleeping in wooden barracks. As Squires came to collect more blocks with a wheelbarrow he'd cobbled together for the occasion, Chef asked him what he was building.

Squires took a second to catch his breath and stretch his back and said, "Provision warehouse. Place to store our food and perishables. Once the harvests start coming in," he nudged his chin at the fields, "we'll need a place to keep out stuff out of the light and the heat. The shack we're using now is badly insulated and rickety. This'll be much better. Eventually", his fingers danced at the area around the in-progress building, "I hope to replace the kitchen walls with stone and attach them to the storehouse. That way you can cook more efficiently and it's not such a fire hazard."

Chef had to admit that right now, the wooden shack for cooking was an inferno waiting to happen.

"We can then use the old kitchen for something else, or tear it down, use the boards as fuel." He shrugged. "I think there's enough stone and binding material to last us a good long time. As long as someone keeps cutting stone, we can keep building." He chuckled. "If neither of our backs give out."

It was around noon when Cassie and Noah returned with a carcass of another goat, much like the mad one Procene had shot the night before. This one, thankfully, had been docile. It meant a welcome break for Chef to stop cutting stone (he'd put together a nice reserve for Squires anyway) and cook up lunch. He deftly gutted, skinned and cleaned the ibex, whipped up some berry sauce and threw in the mushrooms they had left as a side dish. It was too much for one sitting, but meat kept longer when it was cooked, and as long as the provision warehouse wasn't finished, they'd need to do their best to make supplies last as long as possible.

As if through magic, Procene (again Procene!) came sailing in on a post-apocalyptic wind with the announcement that she'd probably found a way to create air coolers that could keep a room cold, even freezing, if enough of them were enabled. That, along with some way to generate power by burning wood.

Everyone's interest was immediately peaked, even Chef's and even Larisa's, as Procene explained the process of building a generator and hooking it up to the cooling machines. All they needed were the right components and a metal housing. They wouldn't need to program components, since both functions already had components set to perform the relevant tasks, after all, the longsleepers needed to both generate their own power, and be cooled and heated. It was just a matter of hooking the right component up to the right machine.

After the meal, Squires followed Procene to her research table where she explained what needed to be done, and it wasn't before long that he and Chef put together a big metal crate with an exhaust and a component embedded in the top. Procene gave directions, explaining that the big crate would be used to burn wood, the heat from which would be converted into electrical power by the component set in the top. She'd cannibalised some wiring from the longsleepers and attacked that to the stone walls, leading back to the generator. When the generator was successfully welded together – it was more complex than just a steel crate, but they'd still been able to put it together rather easily – she hooked the wire to the component and then had them build small steel housings, not more than big vents, essentially, and set a component in those as well.

"Alright," she announced with an anticipating sigh. "Let's… see if this works."

They chucked some firewood into the generator, set it alight and saw the light on the component blink on. A second or two later after they'd closed the hatch, the improvised coolers began emitting a low buzz.

Tiptoeing towards them, as if afraid to scare them into malfunctioning, Procene held up her remaining hand and felt the stream of air.

Her face was expressionless for a short moment before her eyes lit up and she said, "Feel, feel!"

Squires' eyes told Chef the same thing he felt himself, a feeling of a hope they finally dared to have. They both ran towards Procene and felt the air. It was cold.

"Ha- _haaaa_!" Squires exclaimed, jumping in the air, up and down, pumping his fist like an idiot. "It's working! It's workiiiiing!"

Feeling all inhibitions fall off him, Chef permitted himself to break into song, strutting around with his elbows out, his thumbs hooked in imaginary suspenders. _"I am the monarch of the sea! I am the ruler of the Queen's na-vee!"_ , he sang, uncaring who was watching him. Larisa could say whatever she wanted, this girl had brought them incredible knowledge and if that wasn't showing she was worthy of trust, then nothing was.

Squires held his fists up in the air and Chef vigorously bumped his into them. "Pow-waaaa!"

Procene, meanwhile, stood smiling her usual gentle smile, her lovely eyes narrowed by her smiling cheeks, watching the two give expression to their elation.

"Procene," Squires shouted, "I would carve you an honest-to-God statue if we had the time and I had the skill!"

She chuckled. "No need for that, I'm only doing my part, sitting down and reading books. It's you guys who're doing the actual work."

"Still," Chef agreed with Squires. "Being able to keep our food cold will make a huge difference. Especially once winter comes," he looked up at the sky, "which I think won't be too far away, if this planet plays by Terra's rules."

Squires nodded. "No reason to believe it shouldn't. A freezer will probably keep us from starving during winter. But hey," he realized, "does this mean we'll be able to do the reverse too?"

Procene cocked her head questioningly.

"You know, heat places in winter?"

"Oh. Like that. Yeah, I don't see a reason why not, after all the longsleepers had heating elements too."

"That is ace, Procene." He put his hands in his sides and sighed in contentment. "Heated rooms in winter, ice cream in summer…"

"Well," Chef pointed out, "We won't have any of those if we stand around dawdling, right?"

Squires gave him a gun-finger. "Exactly right, Chef-man! Let's get on with it."

Before they could, though, they saw Larisa and Odile standing behind them, Larisa's eyes stormy and her arms crossed.

"What's uh, what's all the cheering and singing about?" Odile asked. Had Larisa asked the question, it probably would've been worded slightly differently.

"We uh," Chef answered, "we think we got a cooling system to work."

"We think?" Squires exclaimed. "We did. We got it to work. Seriously, man, feel the cold air coming from those elements."

"Oh, that's… great," he said. "Keep our food fresh and all."

"Geez," Squires said. "Don't be _too_ enthusiastic."

He chuckled. "Sorry, I guess I'm just not the exuberant type."

"Well, you should be. This just might have saved us."

Before everyone could take too much notice of Larisa's thundercloud face, Cass too returned, hauling another bird. "Hey guys. We havin' a meeting?"

Squires and Chef once more explained their achievement.

"Ooh, that _is_ good news. Great job, guys. And you too, Procene! Good thing we lopped off your hand instead of leaving you to die."

Procene chuckled mildly. "Glad to prove I was worth the harrowing experience."

Squires clapped Chef on the shoulder. "Come on, Chef-man, let's get this thing finished."

They worked until the late hours, Squires carrying on and then taking Larisa for a walk while Chef made dinner, accompanied by Odile who hung around for a chat after a day of toiling in the fields. He assured Chef that in a few days, they'd be able to harvest the first rice plant, assuming nothing like some sudden blight happened. But he'd chuckled when he'd said the odds of a sudden plague wiping out all the crops in one instant were ridiculously small. "I mean, unless some mean-ass God _really_ has it in for us, but… that won't be the case, will it?"

Chef didn't think so either.

When he looked up from his cooking, he saw Procene rising from her research table and looking out at the horizon, her hand on the revolver at her hip. "Hey Odile, we should go check. Looks like trouble."

He noticed it too and said, "Yeah, let's go see."

"Trouble?" Chef asked Procene when they joined her. They saw what she was looking at now too, a group of people walking towards the settlement, at least seven of them. They looked to be armed with bows and spears, but Chef counted at least two guns. And Cass wasn't there, not that they'd stand much of a chance even with her there, if these people proved to be violent. His stomach became a painful ball.

"… I don't think so," Procene said, squinting against the setting sun. "They… don't seem hostile."

"How can you tell?"

"One of them's carrying what looks like a lever-action rifle. I don't know much about guns, but I definitely know the range of that thing is more than enough for them to attack now if they wanted to, instead of getting in range of my revolver. The fact that they're not already shooting looks… promising."

As she said it, one of the people, wearing what looked like a wooden tribal mask, raised his hand and called out what sounded like a friendly greeting, but in a language Chef didn't understand.

He and his friends responded to the raised hand with a greeting of their own.

The people came even closer, and the man in the mask began speaking, a series of breathy syllables, clipped and cadenced.

"I… we… don't understand," Procene said.

The masked man gestured towards one of his warriors to come forward. The girl, not looking a day over sixteen and dressed in a very skimpy cloth two-piece, stepped to the fore and unrolled a large blanket, displaying the contents inside. There were bundles of dried herb, primitive melee weapons, some sort of dried meat mixed with fruits and kneaded into a ball with fat, and what looked like herb cigars.

"Oh, you… want to trade?" Procene asked, making circular motions with her hand and stump to illustrate what she meant.

The masked man let out a short syllable and made a sharp nod.

"Any of you know what these things are?" Odile asked the others. "The dried herbs look medicinal, but…"

"Yes," Procene confirmed. "Wild healroot. We used it for, well." She held up her bandaged stump.

"The dried food is some sort of pemmican," Chef told the others. "Tastes pretty bland but keeps for ages."

"And I assume those uh, smokable things are, well," Procene cleared her throat, "meant for 'relaxation' purposes."

"Mm," Chef said. "We could use the pemmican, as much as they can spare and we can afford. What about the herbs?"

"Medicine is always important," Procene said. "But what do they want for it? We can't trade if we have nothing to give in return."

The girl in skimpy clothes tapped the masked man on the shoulder and pointed at the longsleeper wrecks lying a ways further.

"Hu!" the man exclaimed in realization, then uttered a few more syllables.

"We… don't understand, sorry," Procene said again.

The young girl held up her finger to attract their attention and said carefully, "Seel… bar," her cute face immediately turning red in embarrassment. Chef tried to keep his eyes off her considerable bust.

"Seel… bar?" Procene asked. "I'm sorry, I don't…"

She giggled and tried again. "Seel…bar. Meh… tell."

"Meh tell?" Then Procene's face kit up. "Oh! Meh-tell. Metal! Silver, you want silver?"

The girl stared intently and Procene's lips when she spoke and painstakingly said, "Seel… var." She bounced on her heels, making the big white flower in her jet-black hair dance, as well as… other parts of her, and pointed at the longsleepers again, saying a word in her language.

"Right," Procene said to the others. "They want silver in return, and they know that it's used in electronics… somehow. Stay here, I still have some from when I disassembled those components. Figured it was worthless except as a conductor, but if these people want it, well, better to trade it for something we need right now."

"But," Odile protested. "If you go… well, you've got the gun."

She smiled gently. "If they wanted to kill us, they'd have done so by now." She turned to the masked man, pointed at the shack and said, "Silver."

The mask went down and up in a curt nod.

As they waited, Chef noticed the young tribal girl giving him a coy look and a smile and he felt warmth rushing up his chest. A quick reprimand from her leader made her look at the ground instead of at Chef.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Procene came back with a mess tin of silver flakes.

The girl clapped in her hands and said enthusiastically, "Seel-var!"

Procene placed the silver flakes on the blanket and pointed at the medicinal herb. The flower-haired girl slid them forward and counted off a suitable number of silver flakes, more than half. Procene then pointed at the pemmican and the girl slid them towards them too, took the rest of the silver flakes, then pondered for a moment, sliding a quarter of the pemmican back towards the tribe's side.

"I… suppose that's fair?" Odile said.

"I think they know the rates of silver-to-tribal-stuff better than we do," Chef pointed out. "If they say that's what it's worth, then I guess that's what it's worth."

"I don't think they're giving us a bad deal or taking advantage," Procene said. "They'd be able to give us much less and they know it, so I think they're being fair." She looked at the man in the mask and bowed. It was the universal gesture of respect, so hopefully it was among this tribe too. The girl, however, covered her mouth with her hand and burst into laughter, the other guards of the tribe laughing along with her. Even the masked man let out a chortle, though his arms remained crossed.

Procene stood dumbfounded for a moment before the girl, still giggling, mimicked her gesture and then pointed her finger back and forth and back and forth between Procene and the tribe leader, before hooking her fingers into each other.

"Oh!" Procene realized. "It uh… seems I accidentally proposed to their leader?"

"You could do worse," Odile pointed out. "Can't see his face, but look at those pecs. Hmhm."

Those weren't exactly the pecs Chef was currently focusing on (and trying very hard not to), so he took Odile's word for it. "At least they're having a good laugh about it."

The girl got her guffawing under control enough to roll up her blanket, along with the silver flakes and the remainder of the goods, leaving the medicinal herb and the agreed-upon pemmican behind.

The chief grunted an order to his men and they turned, with the young girl giving Chef a final flutter of her eyelids before they left.

"If you want to give her a bow," Procene said with a mysterious smile, "I certainly won't blame you."

He stood looking at the departing group. "She… she's probably too young for me anyway."

"She looks old enough. And we're on the Rim," Odile pointed out. "The cops aren't going to arrest you or anything."

For a brief minute, Chef doubted whether or not he should. Or at least tell her to wait, but his hesitation was just long enough for her to pass beyond his reach. "Nah…" he said. "It's fine, there's no point."

"Sure," Odile said with a shrug and began gathering the stuff they'd bought. Procene looked at him with a face that showed either disappointment or compassion.

"… What?"

"Nothing," she said quietly. "Just… sometimes the difference between a lifetime of happiness and a lifetime of loneliness is a single moment of courage."

"Come on," he snorted. "She was a teenage tribal girl who was being flirty with the exotic travellers from another world. Hard to tell if she's a potential 'lifetime of happiness' at this point, is it?"

She half-shrugged. "Well, now you'll never know." She sounded positively sad, and he realized he felt that way too. But it was too late. She sighed and said, "Promise me, if they do ever come back, that you'll at least invite them to the campfire so you can… I don't know, talk to her or something."

"We'll see."

She smiled at him and said, "If you don't then I will," and walked back to her desk.

Chef stood looking for a while longer, the shapes of the traders now just small blotches in the dusk, then went to continue dinner, trying to tell himself he'd avoided making a fool of himself instead of missing a wonderful opportunity.


	10. Days Go By

**.**

* * *

 **Days Go By**

* * *

When Cassie woke up, nuzzled awake by Noah, the first thing she noticed was that Squires had worked well into the night, getting almost half of the soon-to-be shared bedroom with Larisa built. She smiled to herself when she realized that there was nary such a powerful motivator as the prospect of some good lovin'. After the others had shared the story about the trading party that had visited, everyone had gone to bed, except Squires and Larisa, still busily toiling. Well, one toiling, one keeping the other company.

"Morning," Procene came to sit by her. "Sleep well?"

"Hey, morning," she greeted back. "as well as can be, the accomodations being what they are."

She smiled thinly. "Well, maybe the future of climatized and comfy bedrooms isn't that far off. Nothing's certain but we do have hope."

"Thanks to you."

Procene hugged her knees, staring into the embers of yesterday's campfire. "I'm no more valuable than you guys are. We wouldn't have an immediate food source without you, long-term ones without Procene and Odile, or shelter without Squires. And we're not eating things raw thanks to Chef. If you consider that, then maybe the stump-armed girl who sits around reading books isn't all that special." She extended her good hand and rubbed Noah on the snout.

"Don't sell yourself short," Cassie reminded her, "If we want to survive, we need to get tech up and running. I don't think wooden shacks and campfires will cut it when the winter hits. We don't even know what we can expect. Might be arctic temperatures, no one knows."

"I don't think so," Procene said carefully. "This kind of vegetation wouldn't survive if winters were _that_ harsh. But yes, I do think we can expect some serious cold."

"Well, I better start making myself useful. Those animals don't hunt themselves. Well, unless they get mad and suddenly charge at us, I s'pose." Behind them, Chef and Squires resumed work on the storehouse.

"Let's hope they keep that to a minimum."

She chuckled. "Yeah. How's the hand?"

Procene held up the remains of her arm, looking at it intently. "It's… still a nagging pain."

Cass was surprised to hear it was healing so quickly. "Really? Just that?"

She sighed. "Honestly? No. It still hurts immensely. Probably will for a few more weeks."

Her heart sank. "Aw, geez. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'd rather be alive and hurting than dead and, well… not."

She briefly put her arm around Procene's shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "We'll, we're glad you're still with us too. And not just because you're useful. If we'd let you die, we'd never have gotten to know such a kind-hearted person, and that would've been a waste." She briefly thought of the bisected girl in the crashed longsleeper, and a numbing wave of sadness washed over her. If things had gone differently, maybe she'd have been able to say the same to the blonde girl too. Now they'd never know her.

"Everything alright?"

She returned to the present and said, "Yeah, fine, just… thinking of the people who didn't make it."

Procene stared off into the distance. "Oh. I… try not to."

"Me too. I don't always succeed."

She sighed. "Me neither." After a moment, she said, "but then again, we _are_ alive, and the greatest injustice we can do to those who died is not to fight and work for the lives we have, and not enjoy them as much as we can."

There was a thought she agreed with. "Absolutely. It's the greatest respect we can give them."

She felt Procene's hand take hold of hers. "We've got a good thing here, Cassie. And I'm grateful to be part of it, every single moment."

"We're happy you're here, too."

They both fell silent, looking out at the horizon and enjoyed the moment. At least, until Larisa stomped by, kicking up dirt on her way to the fields.

Cassie left the others to hold the fort and struck out on her own again, determined to keep the meat coming in. It was the most useful thing she could do at the moment, the others looked like they had the other needs of the colony nailed down, so she could concentrate fully on providing meat. The vegetables would be ready to harvest soon – some of them at least – but until then, they needed to keep their strength up. Plus, they couldn't just eat vegetables. The luxury of principle that had existed on Terra was no longer relevant here, and they'd need stuff like vitamin B12 to stay healthy and keep their strength up.

She wandered around, enjoying the day as Noah danced around her feet, occasionally yapping in good cheer. There weren't many animals around today – or at least not many who didn't notice Cass before she noticed them – but she was confident she'd find something before the day was done.

She crested a hill and looked back at the colony, now just a barely perceptible bunch of small dots far away. Procene had been right – they had a good thing here. And as long as no internal conflicts arose, they'd do just fine, Chef's pessimism notwithstanding. She sat down and squeezed one of the packaged survival meals empty in her mouth.

The taste was bad enough, but she really wished she had a damn table to eat at. She made a mental note to remind the others to fashion a table and a few chairs.

Procene had been a godsend. There was no doubt about it. The others, too, really. They'd been lucky so far, only encountered friendly people. Well, except the two slavers that had chased Odile, but were slavers and rapists really people? She supposed they were. Who knew what kind of horrible things had led them to this life? Again she wondered what it had been like had she managed to save the girl in the longsleeper. Would she have been a valuable addition to the colony too? A kind, cheerful soul who said nice things, made jokes and rolled up her sleeves when she had to? Maybe not. Speak not ill of the dead, but she could've just as easily been a mean-hearted shrew or an air-headed spoiled brat. But she didn't think so. Certainly not the first. Maybe a spoiled rich girl, sure, but not some rotten-personality troublemaker. Her eyes had been too kind for that, even in her dying panic. Even on the magazine covers.

Noah nudged her from her musings, panting with her tongue hanging out. When Cass didn't immediately respond, Noah took the hem of her sleeve between her teeth and tugged.

This got Cass' attention. She'd smelled or seen something. And indeed, when she followed Noah's gaze, she saw a magnificent doe standing near a large puddle, taking a drink.

As much as it grieved her to shoot such a beautiful animal, she still shouldered her rifle and fired, the beast dead before it hit the ground.

Noah barked and bounced in victory and Cass modestly joined in, making a quick pirouette. She tied a rope to the beast's neck and got ready to haul the animal back to base. Before she could begin her return, however, she saw a brightly-tailed streak flash across the sky, going down between the trees a few kilometres away. She saw a flash of light, and a few moments later, the sound of a short _thud_ reached her ears.

Shit! What to do? Leave the dead animal and go for the crashed whatever-it-was? At the risk that her prize would be gone or eaten by scavengers? Or stick with what was certain and drag the food they needed back to the colony, leaving the crashed object be, no matter what it had been?

Again, she thought of the blonde girl, dying naked with her insides bright red in the grass and made a decision.

Hoping the deer carcass would still be there, she grabbed her rifle and ran, telling Noah to follow.

* * *

"Larisa! _Larisa_!"

Cradling Bob the cat in her arms, she turned towards the voice of Odile, in the distance. He stood there waving excitedly at her. What was he being all giddy about? She nudged her chin at him and made a questioning face.

"Come see, come see!"

The guy was nice and all, but knowing him, he was probably just being awed by a frog or a particularly shiny rock or something. Larisa thought it was endearing to see how he'd find such joy in small things, but when it meant she had to come all the way over to see them, she was a bit less enthusiastic.

Still, she trudged over to him after looking back at Squires and Chef busily completing the storehouse. Her eyes briefly brushed past the first shack, with Procene inside it, doubtlessly thinking up more contraptions to ingratiate herself with. Larisa had to admit that she'd probably been wrong about her, and that if she was untrustworthy, she'd proven to be so by now, but she still had a weird feeling about her. Something didn't sit right. She was too likeable, too friendly, too kind-natured. It still made her uncomfortable. Like she had something to hide.

"Hey! Larisa!"

Right, Odile and his stupendous discovery. She scratched Bob's head, eliciting a modest purr, and trudged over to the other side of the field.

"Look, look!" He was pointing down at the plants they'd sown.

She looked where he was pointing and bent over, carefully so as not to discomfort Bob. Peering at the rice plant, she saw what he'd been so excited about. A few small grains, greenish-white, were visible.

Okay, this _was_ good news, definitely. It meant not only that they'd probably be able to harvest soon, but it meant they'd be able to harvest in the first place. It meant their plants bore fruit, which was by no means a certainty. She felt a smile forming on her lips and let it happen, standing up straight again and using her free hand to answer Odile's high-five.

"This is a relief, isn't it?" Odile spoke her thoughts out loud. She nodded and gave him a thumbs up. Bob the cat wriggled free and jumped off her arm, distracted by whatever it was cats were always distracted by. "I mean," he continued, "you worked so hard the past days, this is all you, Risa!"

She let out a startled _urk!_ when he threw his arms around her and pulled her against him. He immediately let go and stepped back, his face red. "Oh, geez, sorry, I just got… uh, I got carried away."

She made sure to show he'd made her seriously uncomfortable just now.

"No, no, you don't… you don't have to worry, I didn't, I didn't mean anything by it."

No, he probably didn't. and she was well aware that while she wasn't a fan of physical contact except in some specific circumstances, others thought nothing of giving people hugs without warning. They just didn't stop and think others might not like being hugged that much. She held up her hands and reassured him it was alright.

"Y- yeah, sorry, I was just… You know. Excited."

She nodded to show she understood.

"Anyway, you uh," he grinned and scratched the back of his head, "You don't have to worry about me having like, bad intentions. It's not um, you know. It's not like that."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Let's uh," he cleared his throat, "get back to work." He picked up his seed bag and resumed pulling weeds.

After standing there for a moment and not understanding, she shrugged and returned to her part of the field.

* * *

The air burning in her lungs and her legs lashed by the thorns in the undergrowth, she ran on, ignoring the screaming of her tired muscles. Noah darted alongside her, occasionally giving her a look before setting her eyes straight ahead again.

Between the tops of the trees, Cass saw the smoke plume, which kept her on target. It felt like it didn't come closer, but she reminded herself that it did, even if it didn't look like it. She tripped over a root, made a harmless tumble through a bed of creepers, snatched her rifle again and resumed her run.

Every second could count. She had to suffer the powerlessness and the grief of watching a person die with nothing she could do, and she was going to do everything she could not to have to go through that ever again. And the only way to do that was to run like hell.

She deftly leapt over a fallen tree, now seeing the smoke between the trunks of the trees instead of having to follow it drawn against the sky. Almost there.

 _Please let me be on time._

On she ran, her legs slowly turning more and more to rubber with every leaping bound she took.

"Hey!" she shouted hoarsely. "Anyone there?"

Finally, she reached the crash site. A large metal cube, about twice her height, lay askew between the trees, one corner buried deep in the loose earth. The trees themselves had been splintered and smashed apart, the ones around the crash uprooted by the shockwave, leaning crooked against their brethren.

"Hey!" she shouted again, lifting her rifle and panting rapidly. "Friendly here! If anyone's… there… come out with… your hands up."

But then she noticed a metal plate screwed against the side of the cube. She couldn't read the smaller print, but the heading said, in large black letters

MANIFEST

Ah, shit. This was cargo. She'd ran like an idiot for _god damn cargo_. No one was injured, no one was dying, no one was _even there_. God damn it, she'd left a valuable animal carcass for a wild goose chase. She was such a damn idiot. And now it'd probably be dark by the time she got home, because there was no way her body would tolerate her sprinting all the way back. And all that because she lost her head thinking there might be someone dying. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at her own stupidity.

But hey, she realized. Hey, hey. Cargo. This might not have been a useless run after all. There might be something useful in there. Something incredibly valuable, even.

Ignoring her entire body screaming at her to sit down and take a damn breather, she approached the cargo cube. It was still intact on her side, but when she stepped around it, she saw that one of the sides had bent and torn, partly folded outward, with the cube's cargo spilling out of the container, onto the earth.

What she saw made her jaw go slack. Then she felt it slowly rise in her lungs. There was nothing she could do to stop it, her body no longer responded to any commands. It started with some mild hiccupping, her shoulders hitching along, but her lungs began working more and more rapidly, her shoulders hitching as they pulled in air in a stuttering staccato.

Finally, it came. Completely numb, she heard herself let out bouts of hysterical, screaming laughter as she fell over, her arms around herself. She shrieked laughter, even though her mind didn't think it was funny at all, it was purely a discharge of all the tension and exertion, her body letting it all go in the face of such useless panic and stupid hysteria over nothing at all.

She gasped for breath in between her bouts of screaming laughter, until finally the hysteria lessened, the contractions of her lungs becoming less agonizing and cramped, and the guffawing finally stopped, leaving her to lie in the loose earth, panting through a burning throat.

After lying there for a minute or two, Noah licking her nose, she got back to her feet. Her muscles, her lungs, her throat, everything hurt.

Eventually, she mustered up the courage to begin the walk back to her hunting spot, her hysterical laughter replaced by silent tears of utter fatigue as she left the cargo cube behind, along with all its cargo, the earth strewn with countless wooden prosthetic feet.


	11. Precarious Balance

**.**

* * *

 **Precarious Balance**

* * *

"Get Cassie, hurry! Procene, too!"

Larisa sped off without hesitation, back to the barrack. Chef had woken up early and decided to get some fresh air, and a good thing he had. The two figures moving between the bushes a hundred metres off didn't look they were particularly well-meaning. Larisa had been sitting by the embers of the fire when he'd gotten up, and she too had noticed the two people. They carried bows and spears.

If they were of the tribe that had traded with them the day before yesterday, they certainly weren't doing a good job of looking like it.

Procene was the first to reach him, and she immediately expressed the same feeling he had. "Oh dear. They don't look friendly."

As if to confirm her appraisal of the situation, one of the figures pulled back the string of his bow and released. Chef, Larisa and Procene flinched instinctively, even as the arrow went wide by several metres and embedded itself in the ground behind them.

"Take cover," Procene ordered, and kneeled behind a tree stump as the others sought protection behind the stone barrack walls.

Another arrow came, this one aimed at the barrack, where Cassie just emerged, clacking the bolt on her rifle. Chef felt his eyes go wide when he saw the arrow embedding itself into Cass' thigh with a wet _thud_. Cass screamed and stumbled, but somehow retained her footing and made it to cover, aiming her rifle from behind the stack of stones Chef had cut the day before.

Noah barked nervously, but the next arrow buried itself harmlessly in the grass.

Procene returned fire, a quick cadence of three shots with her one hand. Two of the bullets missed their mark, the bow-wielding tribal moving deftly between the bushes, but the other hit the attacker in the side of the pelvis, and the body flopped down to the ground, writhing and kicking.

The tribal with the spear had closed the distance, and Chef watched in dread as she reared herself up, dressed in no more than a loincloth, and hurled the spear at Procene. The tip struck the tree stump, but the spear spun end over end, the butt smacking hard into the side of Procene's head as she tried to duck out of the way. The girl stumbled and fell back on her backside, the revolver falling into the grass. From the corner of his eye, Chef saw Squires emerging from the barrack, running straight for Larisa and wrapping his arms around her. Odile simply peeked out the doorway.

It was Cassie's turn to fire, and she didn't mess about, even though the pain in her leg must be immense. The first shot struck the half-naked woman in the chest, tearing up her left breast in a spray of blood and yellow fatty tissue. Another shot got her in the throat and she went down, blood spurting from the wound. A few more kicks and she was still.

Procene fumbled for her weapon and recovered it, taking aim at the remaining attacker, who was trying desperately to redraw his bow from a prone position. Her shot struck the man right between the eyes in an incredibly lucky shot, blowing his brain out the back of his head.

The enemies were dead.

Still dizzy, Procene stumbled towards the grimacing Cassie, who was holding her injured leg. "You're bleeding bad," she said, "keep pressure on it. Larisa! Get the medicinal herb, go!

Cassie grunted, "the rest, keep your eyes open, there may be more."

Again, Larisa did as she was told, running for the herbs they'd bought from the – presumably other – tribe. Procene bound the wound and treated it with the herbs while the others looked out over the grasslands, but nothing came.

"I think… I think you'll be fine."

"What… what just happened?" Odile asked.

No one answered at first, but then Procene said, "I think… we just got raided? I don't know. They just… didn't even try to communicate, just started shooting."

"Are you two alright?" Squires asked. "I mean, you just… killed people."

"I'm fine," Procene said quietly. "I mean… we had to."

"Yeah," Cassie grunted from between clenched teeth. "Us or them."

"They didn't even make demands," Chef muttered. "Didn't even tell us what they wanted." He couldn't believe it. Why would people just attack outright? For no reason?

"Pretty sure," Cass responded to that, "that they wanted to kill everyone and take our stuff."

"Crazy fuckers," was all Squires had to say to that.

Meanwhile, Odile trudged off towards the bodies, saying they might have been carrying something valuable. Chef supposed he was right, but this wasn't really the first thing on his mind. They thought they'd been safe, for the most part, but it seemed this wasn't the case. What if he and Larisa hadn't been awake? These two tribal who-ever-they-weres would have sneaked into the camp and slaughtered everybody. Most would've woken up dead, and the rest dying. Noah might've barked them awake, but if these tribals were even the least bit clever, they'd silence the animals first. They'd need a night guard, or some kind of alarm system. Maybe Procene could think of something later. Right now she was busy bandaging Cassie's wound.

"Femoral artery's not hit. Mostly muscle, I think," she muttered. "I mean, I'm not a doctor, I just know first aid, but… doesn't look dangerous." She looked up at Cassie. "You should rest though."

"Yeah," she grunted. "I know. Hate it, but I know."

"We won't starve, don't worry." She laid her hand on Cass' shoulder. "Go on. Rest up." But she immediately checked and said, "Sorry. I shouldn't be telling you what to do."

With a chuckle, Cass told her, "don't worry, you're part of the group now, and you get just as much say as everyone else. And you're right, I need to let this heal, at least for now."

Procene smiled at her and said, "Yes. That would be best."

Odile came back, holding a long object in his hand. "Only thing worth bringing was the bow. Few arrows left too. Anyone mind if I hang on to this? I'm not a terrible shot, and I'd like to have something to defend myself with."

Nobody objected. Chef looked back at Squires and Larisa, who stood a ways further, their arms around each other's shoulders, and assured himself they were alright, then went to find some way to keep himself busy. No point going back to sleep now, might as well start the day. Larisa pointed at the bucket of muffalo milk she'd extracted earlier in the morning and then to the rice fields.

"Sorry, what?" Chef asked.

The girl rolled her eyes and wrote,

 _milk_

 _rice ready_

 _wait a few_

 _make rice porridge_

Oh, yeah, that was a nice idea. "You got it. It'll be a bit bland without sugar, but it'll make for a nice change." She just nodded and walked away. Sure was a weirdo. Lunch could be made with the doe Cassie had managed to bring back in the small hours yesterday. Lots of meat on it, and if the storehouse could be finished today, they'd be able to keep it somewhat cool. Maybe even fully refrigerated.

"Hey, Chef-man," Squires slapped him on the shoulder, as if he'd known what he'd been thinking. "Let's finish up our walk-in freezer today, yeah?" He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "I can't wait to see it work!"

Chef again wondered how a cheery, energetic guy like Squires and a quiet, standoffish girl like Larisa had ended up falling in love, but he guessed that was just the magic of hormones and hearts at work, and he didn't mind it one bit. "Absolutely. But as soon as Larisa and Odile start bringing in the rice, I'm chaining myself to the stove."

He nodded with a grin. "I wouldn't have it any other way. Now come on, let's hop to it."

The work went well, and by the time Larisa and Odile brought forth the first bags of barely-ripe rice, the only thing that was left to do was part of the roof.

"Hey Risa," Squires called down from his spot on the wall, his legs dangling on either side, "Think we'll score a lot of rice from your little plantation?"

She flashed a beaming smile – it warmed Chef's heart to see it – and stuck both thumbs up. Then she held up a bag of rice and flashed two times ten fingers. Then she waggled her hand to show it was an estimate.

"Hot damn," Squires cheered back. "No food problems anytime soon, right Chef?"

"Nope," he answered. "We still need to vary though. Rice every day might get us constipated."

"There'll be more, right? There's potatoes growing, and uh, corn too?"

Larisa nodded, still smiling, then went back to harvest more rice. It was a lot more work than just pulling the plants, it would seem, because they spent a _lot_ of time bent over. "Well," Chef announced, "That's my cue. Late breakfast coming right up!"

"Good," Squires acknowledged. "I'm hungry."

* * *

Larisa felt as if her back was broken, but it felt _great_. The pain made her feel alive, and finally harvesting the rice, even if it was just a little bit too early, brought her joy and pride. And relief, that they'd been able to grow the plants in the first place. You never knew on an alien planet. For all they knew, the soil could've been infertile for their seeds. Or toxic. Like, full of ammonia or something. It was insane how lucky they'd been. She didn't know much about astronomy, but she definitely knew that the chances of landing on a planet in the goldilocks zone of a star, with a breathable atmosphere and water were stupidly slim. And yet here they were, doing pretty great, all things considered – that was, if this Procene chick wasn't just biding her time, waiting for the colony to be properly up and running, before shooting them all in the back. She still didn't trust her. But she also knew she was pretty much the only one left who was still somewhat guarded. Even Chef seemed to have thrown all wariness to the wind. She'd have to be doubly careful. Maybe the girl was legit, but if she wasn't, then at least one person should keep her eyes open. Even Terry had begun to blindly trust her. She'd brought the matter up with him in the late hours, but he simply didn't see the problem.

"Daydreaming?" Odile tore her from her thoughts.

She shook her head, gave him an all-clear sign with her fingers and bent over to resume the harvesting, but before she could pry the grains free, she heard Chef's voice call out, "Breakfast! Or, uh, brunch, I suppose!"

"Great, I'm starving," Odile cheered. "Come on, Risa, we've earned this and then some."

She followed him back to the shelters. The storehouse was all but done now, Terry finishing up the roof. He waved at her from his spot on the walls, and she smiled and waved back. The others were alright and all, but the only one who could actually warm her heart was him. Maybe because he was so down-to-earth. The others always seemed to be thinking, and talking, and planning. Terry didn't waste time with any of that and just got things done. Or maybe it was the fact that he was the only one who could actually make her laugh. It didn't matter, she felt what she felt and she loved it.

Chef was bringing out wooden bowls of steaming rice porridge, and her stomach growled as she saw them, the steam rising from the food. Having proper meals sure was a big improvement over the thrown-together kibbles and bits that had served as food in the last few days. And at least this was free of carved up cadavers for a change.

Procene came out of her shack too, and Squires hopped down from the wall, falling into step beside her and putting his arm around her shoulder. He smelled of sweat, but that was just fine.

They all sat around the campfire, except Procene, who first wanted to bring Cassie a bowl. She took one, went to the shelter, and emerged a moment later without the bowl, telling the others that Cassie was asleep and that she'd probably eat when she woke up, best to let her sleep.

Everybody was enthusiastically talking around the embers of the old campfire, which had become some sort of an unofficial gathering place, the fallen logs being used as benches. Again the conversation led to tables and chairs, and Squires pledged to make one when he had the time, laughing through a mouthful of porridge. It had no sugar, but it still tasted pretty great. Things were looking up, and her initial uncertainty she'd felt when they'd just landed and started to eke out a meagre existence was slowly fading. Which probably meant something was about to happen to make it all fall apart.

After the late breakfast, Squires went on to finish the storehouse and Chef went back to the kitchen, saying he was going to make more meals out of the scraps they still had lying around. Odile went on back to the fields, leaving Larisa alone with Procene.

She felt awkward, but she wasn't getting up now. She wasn't giving the other girl the satisfaction of feeling she'd driven her off. So she sat there for a while longer, determined to show that she wasn't afraid.

"You still don't like me much, do you?" the girl's soft voice came.

Larisa merely shrugged, still looking away.

"Hey. I'm truly sorry about hurting you when I arrived. I was hungry and desperate and I didn't know who you were. Are you still upset about that?"

Again, Larisa could only shrug.

She heard a sigh. "Hey. I know I didn't make the best entrance, but I was hoping we could move on? Or is there something else?"

Fine. She wanted to know, she got to know. She pulled another paper out of her pocket and wrote,

 _still don't trust you_

at least she wanted to. But before she wrote it down, she realized that the worst thing she could do was to reveal that she was still on her guard. Make the girl think everything was fine, that way she might slip up. So she wrote instead,

 _sorry_

 _was having some dark thoughts_

 _you're alright_

 _don't worry_

She hated lying, and hated apologizing to this intruder, but it was best for now.

Procene took the paper and read. "Oh. You sure it's nothing personal? Because if it is, it's okay to tell me, I won't be upset or anything."

She just shook her head, gave her a thumbs-up and got up to return to the fields.

"I there's anything you need, I'd love to help, alright?"

Shyeah, sure she would. Larisa simply walked away and waved at the girl without even turning. There was something up with her. She was _too_ smooth, too sociable. And Larisa trusted her less and less with every perfectly measured answer she gave. She's pass the rest of the day finding some distraction in the soothing pain in her back, and hoped everyone else would just focus on work like she did.

Thankfully, that was how the day proceeded. All the daylight hours were burned on harvesting, building, cooking, healing, and inventing stuff, or whatever it was the Procene girl did when she sat around flipping the pages of the booklet.

But the feeling didn't go away. The feeling that somehow, this little world they built wasn't as stable as it felt, and could topple any second.


End file.
